Mother Of Cop Killer Unaware Son Was Wanted
MIAMI (CBS4) -Lorraine Simms stood Friday over the spot where her son died after fatally shooting two Miami-Dade police officers the day before. She claims she did not know Johnny Simms was wanted on a homicide warrant for allegedly killing a man last fall during an argument.
Outside her Liberty City apartment she said, "I never knew what my son's intention was. All I heard was a knock on the door saying, 'police, open the door.' I turned around and looked at my son and he said, 'Momma you have to open the door,' and when I opened the door everything went ballistic."
Simms was a violent career criminal, police say, and the Miami-Dade police director, James Loftus, called him "evil." His mother says she knew very little about his criminal past. She told reporters, "When he was laying there dying he looked up at me and said, 'Ma, they were going to kill me anyway and told me not to stand there and watch him die."
Amidst the violence, one neighborhood resident, Tyrone Lamar, spoke up Friday next to the shooting scene. He said, "All this community is not with this thug stuff, going out in a blaze of glory. I believe in the law."
It is a belief Johnny Simms didn't share and two Miami-Dade police officers tasked with taking violent criminals off the streets paid for that duty with their lives.
Simms was just 23-years-old, but he was already in prison twice. His rap sheet shows arrests for robbery, grand theft, and other crimes as an adult. In 2005, he was sentenced to a year for robbery with a deadly weapon. In 2009, he was given another one year sentence for sale of cocaine. That sentence ended in September, and he was still on probation.
The legal problems that cost him and two officers their life started within days of his release. Simms' sister, Shenica Simms, said she was disrespected by Cornelious Larry, 27, at a party last October 16th.
Shenica told police she called her father for help, and when her father said he couldn't come, her brother did. Johnny, started asking where she was.
She told police that another brother, Demetrius Simms, talked to Larry in an effort to get him to leave his sister alone, but while he was talking Johnny Simms arrived on a black bicycle.
A police report said a witness saw Demetrius Simms place a handgun in his sister's baby bag. After the man police believe was Johnny Simms arrived, the witness said they saw him take a gun, point it at Larry and shoot twice.
Larry was found dead in the stairwell of the apartment building where the party was held.
According the affidavit requesting the arrest warrant, which the officers were trying to serve when they were shot, witnesses had problems making positive identifications of Johnny Simms, but investigators still believed they had enough information to charge him with first degree murder, and asked for the arrest warrant, which was granted.
The warrant, and Simm's criminal career, was closed by gunfire and three deaths.
