Sheriff's deputies on Saturday arrested a 30-year-old man who will be charged with capital murder in connection with the shooting death of a deputy at a suburban Houston gas station, a killing the sheriff tied to anger against police.
Shannon Miles was picked up for questioning early on Saturday following the Friday night shooting, which was captured on surveillance video, Harris County Sheriff Ron Hickman told reporters. He noted that Miles is black and has a history of prior arrests for trespassing and resisting arrest.
Earlier on Saturday, Hickman had linked the shooting of deputy Darren Goforth, who was white, to anti-police rhetoric across the country in the wake of deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of white officers.
On announcing the charges against Miles later in the day, Hickman said the department assumed Goforth was "a target because he wore a uniform."
"We have not been able to extract any details regarding a motive at this point," Hickman added. "As far as we know, deputy Goforth had no previous contact with the suspect, and it appears to be clearly unprovoked."
Hickman said a handgun had been recovered and that a ballistics test matched it to bullets recovered from the scene.
Goforth, a 10-year veteran of the force, was pumping gas into his patrol car when the gunman approached from behind and shot him in the back, then shot him more times as he lay on the ground, sheriff's officials said.
Witnesses saw the gunman in a red pick-up truck, and investigators used records that match vehicle descriptions to license plates to track down Miles, who lived near the gas station, Hickman said.
The fatal shooting in a suburb of Houston comes eight months after two New York police officers were ambushed and shot to death in Brooklyn by a gunman who had said he wanted to avenge the deaths of black men in confrontations with police.
New York Police Commissioner William Bratton said at the time of the shooting, which followed large-scale protests over deaths of African-Americans at the hands of officers, that police were unfairly subjected to public anger.
