(DAUPHIN ISLAND PARKWAY, Ala.) - The McCarter family was moving in to their new home when they came face to face with Lawrence Wallace, moments after police say he stabbed a Mobile police officer to death.
“We were bringing a load of stuff in from the truck when a cop car pulled up real fast,” McCarter said. “We thought he was a task force officer or police officer.”
Behind the wheel of the police car was Wallace. Police say he took the vehicle in his escape from Metro Jail after killing Officer Steven Green in the sally port.
“He jumped out the passenger side,” McCarter said. “We yelled at him and told him his car was rolling, because he didn’t put it in park.”
McCarter says Wallace had grabbed an armful of gear from the patrol car, including a gun, before abandoning it.
McCarter, who was with a friend and her two young children, says Wallace didn’t say anything back and bee-lined towards her next door neighbor’s back yard. The police car ended up rolling into a neighbor’s front yard.
“I realized something was up when a bunch of other police cars pulled up,” McCarter said. “They were asking me, ‘Which way did he go? Where did he go?’”
Wallace ended up passing through a gap in the neighbor’s fence and holing up underneath a house. After a nearly three hour standoff in which tear gas was deployed, Wallace was shot to death.
“We were the first people he saw when he came out of that police car,” McCarter said. “He could have taken us hostage inside the house. We’re really lucky.”
