Murder suspect dies after shooting self
VANCOUVER, Wash. – A man accused of killing his wife’s parents and wanted for questioning in a double homicide in Kennewick died Friday, a day after shooting himself in the head as Clark County sheriff’s deputies closed in on him, officials said.
James T. Moran, 33, died early Friday at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, Ore., where he had been on life support, the Multnomah County, Ore., medical examiner’s office told The Associated Press.
Moran was charged by warrant with first-degree murder in the shooting of his wife’s parents, Glenn Dale Carr, 57, and Debra Jolene Carr, 50, in Kennewick on July 9, 2004. He’d been featured on the television show “America’s Most Wanted.”
At a news conference Friday, Kennewick police Sgt. Ken Lattin said Moran also was being investigated in the shooting deaths of Linda Moreno, 52, and her daughter, Danielle, 17. Both were found shot to death Monday in Kennewick.
Police received tips that Moran was in Kennewick at the time of the killings, but his motive or connection to the Morenos is unknown, Lattin said.
After the Carrs’ bodies were found, an Amber Alert was issued for Moran’s four children, then aged 5 to 10. They were found the next day with his mother in Moses Lake, about 90 miles north of Kennewick.
The children’s mother, Mandy Moran, was out of state when her parents were killed.
On Thursday, Moran was confronted by deputies responding to a report that a man and a woman had been abducted by a man in a red BMW at a Burger King outlet, Clark County sheriff’s Sgt. Melanie Kenoyer said.
When deputies arrived, the car sped away, leaving behind a 31-year-old man identified by Kennewick police on Friday as Mark Tucker of Vancouver.
The car made a U-turn at the end of a nearby road and a woman “rolled out and ran away,” Kenoyer said. “That was apparently one of our alleged kidnap victims.”
The woman, identified as Carrie Blackford, 27, of Pocatello, Idaho, told The Columbian newspaper in Vancouver that she had been kidnapped in Idaho. No other details on her account were available Friday.
With only the driver inside, the car continued toward Interstate 5 but collided with one of the deputies’ cars and spun out of control, coming to rest against a traffic barrier on a northbound freeway onramp. As deputies were ordering the driver to get out, he turned a gun on himself, Kenoyer said.
The FBI was looking into the abduction claim, Agent Raymond G. Lauer said in Seattle, declining to comment further.