Alleged Coulter Shooter Making Things Tough For Amarillo Police
One of the more interesting things that has been going on in Amarillo lately is the story of Jared Pearson. He's the person accused of shooting up vehicles along Coulter and 37th Ave., and as we all know, it seemed to be a completely random act of violence.
Police were able to make an arrest and bring him into custody on June 18, but then things started to get a bit strange from there. It didn't go as smoothly as they wanted.
Typically when a person is taken into custody, they're sat down in a room and asked a whole lot of questions. Most of the time, police can get enough out of the person to at least establish probable cause, which is what they need in order to hold that person and levy charges upon them.
In the case of Pearson, he decided not to say a word. Questions were asked, not a word was uttered. Motive? Nothing. What he was using? Nope, not a word. In fact, it got to the point where they ended up having to release him after taking him into custody.
Kind of worrying from a standpoint of if he was indeed the right person, he just got dumped back on the streets and basically given a green light to strike again. Now, I'm a big believer in innocent until proven guilty. I'm in no way saying he did anything wrong and that he's the right person, but when you hear someone was arrested, you assume police got their person and are keeping us safe from anything else happening.
Pearson couldn't keep himself away though, as shortly after he was arrested for possession of a controlled substance. During that timeframe, police were able to recover a rifle from his residence, and they were then able to establish probable cause, all while he was in custody on the possession charges.
Police are awaiting the results from the ballistics tests on the gun, and reminded people that things aren't as open and shut as they appear on TV. Lt. James Clements said, "Investigations aren't like TV. They don't happen within 45 minutes. They take hours and hours sometimes to develop probable cause."
Stay tuned, something tells me this is going to continue to get more interesting as we go along in the case.
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