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Ty Tue Mar 18, 2008 8:45 pm

San Bernardino murder suspect found in Louisiana

10:00 PM PST on Thursday, March 6, 2008
By PAUL LAROCCO
The Press-Enterprise
The man was found with a pistol and two pounds of marijuana, but his identity was proving elusive, police said.

He gave aliases and even relatives' names during a two-hour interview in Monroe, La., Wednesday night.

Then came the admission: He was Robert McKinney, a fugitive charged with murder in San Bernardino.

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"He just kept giving us bogus information we had to try to run down," said Monroe Police Capt. Jimmy Crockett. "Finally, he just submitted and said, 'I'll tell you who I am.' "

At large for almost a year, McKinney, 20, was in the Ouachita Correction Center in northern Louisiana on Thursday, pending extradition to California. The suspected San Bernardino gang member is wanted in the April 11, 2007, drive-by shooting of 18-year-old Jarrett Ojomoh.

Prosecutors in San Bernardino County had issued a $1 million fugitive warrant charging McKinney with murder and attempted murder for the daylight attack on West 19th Street.

Ojomoh, a Canyon Lakes resident, was shot while walking on the sidewalk with a friend. He scaled a fence into the Dorjils housing complex, then collapsed and died at the doorstep of his pregnant girlfriend, police said.

"In my mind, I was thinking maybe they were never going to find him," Ojomoh's cousin, Toni Payne, said Thursday of McKinney. "No one knew where he could have been."

It isn't known how long McKinney had been in Monroe, a city of 60,000. San Bernardino police Detective John Vasek, a member of the FBI's Inland Regional Apprehension Team who searched for him, said reports of his whereabouts varied.

They included northern California, Las Vegas, Louisiana and Alabama, Vasek said.

"It was excellent police work," Vasek said of the Louisiana officers who found McKinney. "We put a lot of work into it, but we're just as happy it happened this way."

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McKinney was detained after members of Monroe's Special Neighborhood Action Program went to a high-crime housing project to check a drug complaint, Crockett said. He was found about 8 p.m. standing in an apartment doorway, a .357-caliber Glock pistol and two baggies of marijuana in his pants.

Police also found two pounds of marijuana inside his apartment, Crockett said.

Based on the amount of marijuana in his residence, he was detained on suspicion of possession with intent to distribute as well as illegal possession of a firearm and resisting arrest by refusing identification.

At first, he gave his name as Montae Taylor.

"His identity was at first totally unknown to us," Crockett said. "I guess you can say we were persistent until we figured out who he was."

McKinney told Monroe officers that the shooting in San Bernardino was gang related, but denied involvement, Crockett said.

Police said Ojomoh was a gang member, which his family denied. Payne said Thursday that it's possible the young man spent time with gang members from his old neighborhood, causing police to consider him a gang member.

"You just don't know these things about them," Payne said. "Teenagers are teenagers."

Weeks before the shooting, Ojomoh had returned to San Bernardino after visiting his father in Africa. He planned to return to Africa after his girlfriend gave birth, Payne said.