[Updated 10:05 a.m. Nov. 26] CONCORD, N.H. — A 23-year-old man opposed to "police-state tactics" was captured in a hotel Tuesday as people in California flocked to a memorial service for a police officer he apparently admitted killing.
Andrew Hampton McCrae, 23, of Olympia, Wash., surrendered without incident at about 10 a.m. EST after a standoff at the Holiday Inn, police said.
Investigators will have to prove the man they arrested is the same Andrew McCrae who admitting on the Web to killing the officer, but police indicated they believe he is. A fugitive warrant from California named McCrae, and Concord Police Chief Jerry Madden referred reporters to the Web site when asked who he was.
The FBI tipped police at 2:19 a.m. that McCrae was staying in a fourth-floor room at the hotel.
A police tactical team arrived at the hotel, a block from the Statehouse, at 6 a.m. and the fourth floor of the hotel was evacuated, police said. FBI negotiators talked with McCrae by phone and tried to persuade him to surrender.
Red Bluff police officer David Mobilio, 31, was shot once in the head on Nov. 19 as he was refueling his cruiser. A man identifying himself as Andrew McCrae claimed responsibility in a posting Monday to a Web site for San Francisco news, www.sf.indymedia.org.
"Hello everyone, my name's Andy," he said in one of two letters. "I killed a police officer in Red Bluff, California, in a motion to bring attention to, and halt, the police-state tactics that have come to be used throughout our country."
The writer said the killing also was "an action against corporate irresponsibility," which he blamed for "all of the major problems in America and throughout the world today."
As many as 5,000 people were expected at Mobilio's memorial service Tuesday in Red Bluff, a city of 13,500. He was the first Red Bluff officer ever killed in the line of duty.
In one of the Internet postings, McCrae claimed he is immune from prosecution because he incorporated himself. Corporate officers are shielded from personal liability for a corporation's debts.
McCrae said the name for his corporation, "Proud and Insolent Youth," was taken from Peter Pan, a famous children's story about a band of children vanquishing the evil pirate, Captain Hook.
"Peter Pan hates pirates and I hate pirates, and corporations are nothing but a bunch of pirates," McCrae wrote. "It's time to send them to a watery grave and rip them completely out of our lives."
"The very concept behind corporations is to protect their owners from taking responsibility for their actions," he said elsewhere. "This means that directors within corporations can dump waste chemicals in our drinking water, or keep our work environments in fatally dangerous conditions, without any personal liability."
He claimed corporations "murder" thousands of people each year.
The incorporation papers, filed in Concord on Nov. 7, list addresses in Loudon, N.H., and Olympia, Wash. The contact phone number listed for McCrae in Olympia did not answer Tuesday morning.
http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/crime/story/5372487p-6360638c.html
Toward FREEDOM