Police Dog Leads Man To Give Up Travis Comeslast Arrested In Execution-Style Killing

He was surrounded by a dozen officers with shotguns and shields, but it may have been a black police dog that convinced a murder suspect to surrender Sunday.

Ending a five-hour North Side standoff, 20-year-old Travis Comeslast backed slowly out of a basement apartment shortly after 6 p.m.

Officers quickly handcuffed Comeslast and escorted him into a patrol car.

He had refused repeated requests to surrender and wouldn’t even answer the telephone to talk with officers. Police had to break an apartment window to make voice contact.

But five minutes after a K-9 unit appeared in front of the two-story brick building at 3007 N. Perry, Comeslast picked up his girfriend’s phone and called 911. The call was transferred to a hostage negotiator on the scene.

“His biggest concern was the dog. When he was on the phone, he said, ‘I don’t want that dog.’ When they backed the dog off, he came out,” said police spokesman Dick Cottam.

Witnesses have linked Comeslast and Irvin Fentroy III to Thursday’s early-morning robbery-slaying at 1903 N. Regal.

Chris O. Gongyin was shot once in the head while home with his wife and their 13-month-old child.

Fentroy, 26, and Comeslast were seen leaving the house by a witness at the time of the shooting, police said.

The suspects were stopped later that day during a routine traffic stop, but Comeslast bolted from the car.

Comeslast, also known as Travis Moses, is the brother of Kenneth “Junior” Comeslast, who was sentenced Friday to life imprisonment without parole for the murders of Kendra Grantham, 16, and Cindy Buffin, 17. They were killed last summer when Comeslast opened fire on four girls sitting on a front porch at 2928 E. Central.

Fentroy and Travis Comeslast are being held in the Spokane County Jail.

, DataTimes