GA- Suspect in carjacking a molester (killed by passerby)

Posted in Related Deaths

9-17-2005 Georgia:

The carjacker-kidnapper shot dead Monday by a passer-by in Cobb County had a conviction for sex crimes and has been tentatively connected to a rape last week in Acworth, police said Tuesday.

Despite his conviction for child molestation and statutory rape, Brian O'Neil Clark, 25, does not appear in the state's database for sexual offenders, and state officials were at a lost to explain why.

As details came out about her abductor Tuesday, so too did a picture of the victim. Kimberly Boyd, 30, was kidnapped at gunpoint shortly after leaving her office Monday morning, police said. She died when Clark turned into the path of a cement truck, causing a collision.

Friends say she was considering a shift from working mother to stay-at-home mom.

Investigators also revealed that Boyd had been shot as she struggled with her abductor. The coroner did not detail the extent of her wound, but police believe she was alive when the cement truck hit her Toyota Sequoia broadside.

As Clark was fleeing that accident, he was shot dead by motorist Shawn Roberts, who had seen Boyd and Clark struggling and followed as the car careened down U.S. 41 in Acworth. Cobb police Lt. Kevin Flynn, said Tuesday that Roberts, 31, was cooperating and appeared to have acted lawfully.

Roberts said he believes that killing Clark probably saved more lives.

Clark had a history of criminal offenses in Cherokee and Cobb counties, according to police and court records.

In April 2002, he was arrested in Illinois and returned to Georgia to face child molestation, statutory rape and burglary charges in Cobb, where he received an 18-month sentence, jail records show.

In Cherokee, Clark was convicted in 2004 of first-degree forgery and was released June 13 after a year in state prison.

Family, friends mourn

Clark had been placed on the sexual offenders database operated by the Georgia Bureau of Investigations after his conviction in Cobb, GBI spokesman John Bankhead said. He was removed from the list while serving time for the forgery conviction, but should have been added after his release three months ago, Bankhead said.

"It's very peculiar that he isn't" on the list, Bankhead said Tuesday. "We're investigating to find out why."

As the police probe continues, the stunned community is reaching out to Boyd's grieving family and friends, who remember her as a dedicated family woman.

"She wanted to stay home with her kids and just be a mom," recalled Kathy Key-Reynolds, who runs a Budget rental office in Kennesaw. Boyd had asked her about six months ago to take over her truck rental business.

"I keep going through what happened and wondering if I had taken her store, would she have been home [Monday] morning and this somehow could have been avoided? It's a real tragedy."

A steady stream of family and friends dropped by the five-bedroom brick home where Boyd lived with husband Michael, stepson Nathan, 13, and their children: Connor, 5, and Chloe, 2. Guests sobbed as they embraced family members in the driveway.

"Kim was a wonderful mother. She loved life, her children, her husband," longtime family friend Tom Boggess said, breaking down. "I don't know of an enemy she ever had."

About 9:30 a.m. Monday, 911 calls began coming in from motorists who saw Boyd fighting with a man inside her Toyota SUV and also along Cobb Parkway near Lake Allatoona, police said.

"She fought for her life in those final moments, I'm sure of it," Boggess said.

Roberts lives about a mile from the Boyd home. He stopped by Monday night, and Boyd's husband thanked him, Boggess said.

That same night, Michael Boyd sobbed as he told his children their mother wasn't coming home, Boggess said.

"They're torn to pieces," Boggess said. Connor "keeps saying his misses his Emmy," the nickname he gave to his mother, he said.

Through family members, Michael Boyd declined to be interviewed but thanked the community for its support.

"We must have received 300 calls so far," Boggess said.

"We're all still in shock," said Scott Ryder, Boyd's brother-in-law. "All I'm going to say is this is obviously something that girl did not deserve."

A 1992 Wheeler High School graduate, Kimberly Diane McCollum married Michael Boyd about eight years ago, Boggess said. Two years ago, they moved into a new home in Bentwater, a sprawling golf community that straddles Paulding and Cobb counties.

Suspect linked to rape

Tuesday afternoon, the Budget truck rental store on Cherokee Street in Acworth was closed. Key-Reynolds, Boyd's friend and business associate, placed a dozen roses on the sidewalk outside. The card read: "Kim, we remember you kindly."

Meanwhile, Acworth police said Clark meets the description of a man who raped and carjacked an Acworth woman last week.

"Further evidence has been confirmed linking Clark to the rape," said Acworth police Officer Wayne Dennard. "However, DNA results from the GBI Crime Lab confirming he is last week's attacker will not be available for some time."

In the Sept. 6 attack, a man confronted the victim as she walked out onto her front porch. He forced her back into the house, raped her and then made her drive to withdraw money from a bank ATM, Dennard said.

Instead, the woman ran inside the bank, and the man, who the victim said had a gun and a knife, drove off in her Honda Accord, Dennard said. A gun recovered at Monday's crime scene may have been taken in last week's attack, Dennard said. ..more.. by CHANDLER BROWN, DON PLUMMER

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Reluctant hero recalls fateful day

As he raced on foot across busy Cobb Parkway last year, armed with a .380 semiautomatic pistol, Shawn Roberts thought briefly that his actions might not be viewed as politically correct.

On that September morning, Roberts was chasing a carjacker, hoping to rescue a woman who had been abducted along with her sport utility vehicle a short time before.


Unknown to him, Kimberly Boyd, the 30-year-old owner of the hijacked SUV, was already dead, killed in a traffic collision moments earlier.

From about 15 feet away, Roberts recalled, the carjacker climbed from the wreckage and headed toward a gas station. As Roberts closed in, he said, the man turned and pointed a .40 caliber handgun at him. Roberts fired, hitting Brian O'Neil Clark with three shots, killing him.

Clark, 25, had been convicted of child molestation, statutory rape and burglary. He'd been released from prison three months earlier.

Roberts said he realized, even at the time, that what he did was controversial.

"It's not [politically correct] to run around in public wielding a handgun, but it's sometimes necessary," he said. "And [it's] our moral responsibility — not just [that of] the police — [to] defend other lives when we can."

Roberts, who owns a company installing media rooms for metro businesses, said he didn't expect to be hailed a hero by people who called from all over the country.

He insists he simply did what he had to do.

"[Clark] was running toward a gas station wearing a bandana around his face and [with] a gun in his hand. He would have carjacked another person, and it could have been worse," Roberts said in a recent interview.

In April, a Cobb County grand jury cleared Roberts of possible criminal charges. A jury spokeswoman cited a section of Georgia law that justifies the use of deadly force by a person "who reasonably believes" it is necessary to prevent death or serious injury to themselves, another person, "or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony."

Kimberly Boyd, who owned a truck rental company in Acworth, had dropped her young son off at school that morning and driven to her office in a strip mall, where police believe she was carjacked in the parking lot.

Five miles from her office, Boyd used her ATM card to withdraw money from a machine outside a bank. Police say she was under duress at the time. On Cobb Parkway, the carjacker pulled over to the roadside, where he and Boyd struggled.

Roberts said he was passing in traffic when he saw Clark hit the woman with his fist and a gun. Roberts told police that when he saw Clark shove her into the back of the Toyota SUV, take the wheel and speed away, he chased them.

A half-mile into the chase, Clark tried to make a sharp left turn. A cement truck northbound on the parkway crashed into the SUV, killing Boyd.

The spot where she died is near a bridge over the Allatoona Reservoir — since renamed the Kimberly Boyd Memorial Bridge by the Legislature.

Clark scrambled from the wreckage after the accident and ran, Roberts said.

When Roberts saw Clark raise his pistol, he said, "I thought I was about to die in about five seconds ... I knew I had to shoot."

When Clark fell, Roberts said he dropped his pistol and waited for authorities.

The Glock pistol found near Clark's body linked him to another violent crime six days earlier, when he used similar methods, according to Acworth police Sgt. Wayne Dennard.

The weapon had been stolen from a woman who was confronted on her porch, raped at her home and then forced to drive to her bank's ATM to withdraw money. In that case, the victim escaped into the bank a block from Kimberly Boyd's business, and the rapist fled in her car.

Dennard said evidence showed that Clark was the offender. "He matched the description given by the rape victim, and by another witness in the neighborhood," he said.

Mike Boyd, Kimberly's husband, lobbied after her death for panic codes that could alert authorities when anyone used an ATM machine under duress. That effort has been unsuccessful, but Boyd did persuade state legislators to strengthen laws on sex offenders by mandating longer sentences and stricter monitoring once they got out of prison. Although state law at the time required all sex offenders to register after their releases, Clark never had.

The law passed in April imposes a mandatory minimum 25-year sentence for violent sex offenders and requires certain designated "sexual predators" to wear electronic monitors for the rest of their lives.

"This should significantly reduce the chances of any more Brian Clarks falling through holes in the system," Boyd said. "If we'd had it last year, proper registration and tracking of Brian Clark would have saved Kimberly's life." ..Source.. by ajc.com (Archive)