Carjack Suspect Says Police Error Killed Girlfriend

A Compton man denied Saturday that he or his girlfriend made any threatening moves toward an Anaheim police officer who shot and killed the 26-year-old woman at the conclusion of a car chase on the Riverside Freeway Thursday night.

In an interview at the Orange County Jail, Timothy Mark Jackson, 31, who was arrested on suspicion of murder and carjacking, said the veteran police officer shot the woman--identified Saturday as Compton resident Tomiko Jones--as the pair tried to flee from a truck that had been carjacked minutes earlier.

“The police (officer) made a mistake. He shot when he wasn’t supposed to,” Jackson said during an interview at the jail, where he is being held on $250,000 bail. “He was trigger-happy.”

La Palma Police Chief Dave S. Barr said Friday that the unidentified officer fired after Jackson or Jones made “some kind of movement that the officer was protecting himself from” as the pair exited the allegedly carjacked truck near the Valley View Street off-ramp in La Palma, shortly after 7:30 Thursday night.

Barr said Friday that no weapon was found on either person, but a source in the Anaheim Police Department has said that investigators have found a weapon believed used in the carjacking.

La Palma and Anaheim police refused further comment Saturday, except to identify Jones for the first time.

Jackson said he told Jones to flee as she slowed the vehicle to a halt on the shoulder of the freeway. Police have said Jackson was driving.

“I told her to pull over,” Jackson said. “I told her to run. I ran, she ran. I heard one shot and she was dead. I laid down howling.”

According to police, however, Jones and Jackson tumbled down an embankment together after Jones was shot. Jones died at the scene and Jackson was taken into custody.

Under the felony murder rule, a suspect can be charged with homicide whenever someone is killed during the commission of certain felonies. As a result, Jackson is being held on suspicion of both homicide and carjacking.

Police said the unidentified carjacking victim picked up Jones, whom police have described as a prostitute, outside the Rustic Inn in the 900 block of Beach Boulevard in Anaheim while she was hitchhiking. Jones directed the man to an isolated spot near the motel, police said.

Then Jackson appeared, pointed a handgun at the driver and ordered him out of the 1993 Ford Ranger, police said.

The driver called 911, and a police helicopter soon spotted the car heading westbound on the Riverside Freeway, where Anaheim police later pulled it over on the shoulder. La Palma police arrived after the shooting.

The Orange County district attorney’s office is investigating the shooting, as it does all officer-involved shootings. The officer, a sergeant with 21 years of experience, has been placed on paid administrative leave for three days.

Jackson, who said he is a gardener, was sentenced to prison for two years in 1987 for burglary and grand theft auto before being released in July, 1990, according to the California Department of Corrections. He returned to prison the same year, after being sentenced to three years for vehicle theft. He was released on parole in January, 1992.

On Saturday, he maintained his innocence in connection with Thursday night’s events.

“They said the truck was stolen. They said maybe we had a gun. That’s not the truth. The truck was given to us. We drove off in the truck.”

Jackson said he believes the officer who shot Jones lost control, while other officers at the scene remained calm. “If I had asked the other police there if they would have shot, they probably wouldn’t have shot,” Jackson said.

He said the couple has an 8-month-old daughter, Jasmine, who was in the care of an aunt in Compton before Thursday’s shooting.

When asked how Jones earned a living, he said: “She did what she had to do to live.”

* OFFICER SHOOTS BOY

A 15-year-old suspect in a drive-by shooting is wounded in Santa Ana. B3