Kevan Baker wanted to forget Wanda Lopez's final moments. He ...

744 COLUMBIA HUMAN RIGHTS LAW REVIEW [43.3:711
Soon, Escochea received reports from several units of a person
seen running in the same Dodd Street area (Points 2 to 3). At 8:16
p.m., less than six minutes after Wanda screamed and three minutes
after the first BOLO, an officer in Car 155 radioed that a civilian
witness “just saw the suspect in the 4900 block of Dodd.” That’s the
block of Dodd Street that ends at McArdle (Point 3), as you travel
from the south. Escochea called all units there, reporting that the
“suspect [was] last seen by a witness running through the yards.”
Within minutes, twenty patrol cars converged on the intersection.
For several minutes, officers tracked the assailant through
the yards. With many cops out of their cars, the radio chatter died
down. At one point, officers driving on McArdle radioed in a request
for help stopping a dark blue Mercury with two Hispanic men in it.
An unnamed officer responded urgently, “No, he was on foot. We need
somebody to try and stop him.” Officers chased the Mercury anyway,
stopping it a few minutes later and confirming it was a false lead.
Gradually, the cops lost track of the suspect.
The next burst of radio traffic began around 8:23 p.m.,
thirteen minutes after Wanda screamed and eleven minutes after
Mejia began broadcasting BOLOs. This burst was even more chaotic
than the first, and it was tinged with a sense of danger as the
dispatcher desperately tried to reestablish contact with officers in hot
pursuit of the suspect on foot. The volley of reports concentrated on
several points along McArdle Road east of Dodd (Points 3 to 7), and
peaked where McArdle meets Kostoryz (Points 6 and 7).
Officer Fowler, the first cop at the Sigmor, was also the first
to direct attention to the intersection of McArdle and Kostoryz, where
he had stopped a man earlier that evening. At 8:23 p.m., he asked the
dispatcher if he had any police units near the intersection. Until then,
Fowler had been attending to Wanda. When the ambulance arrived
and the EMTs took over, Fowler started listening to the radio traffic
and realized that the man described in the BOLOS might be the same
one he had questioned earlier that night at a Circle K at McArdle and
Kostoryz (Point 7).
The Circle K was the competing convenience store nearest to
the Sigmor. About an hour earlier, Fowler had seen a man loitering
suspiciously outside it. When Fowler asked the man what he was
doing, the man said he was waiting for a ride. Fowler may have
figured that if the Sigmor attacker had initially planned to rob the
Circle K before being spooked by a cop, he might now be heading back
to that store for his car or a ride.