Content note: domestic violence
This article was originally published in The Examiner on March 23, 2017.
By Eleanor Skelton
Staff Writer
A Jefferson County grand jury has indicted Willie Ford III, 24, of Port Arthur for fleeing a police officer Feb. 18 and starting a fire at an apartment on Gulfway Drive on Feb. 19, according to court documents.
Ford was previously been charged and convicted of evading arrest and detention when he was accused of fleeing from officers on Nov. 18, 2015.
Groves Police Officer Alex Thibodeaux said in the probable cause affidavit that he was on patrol on Feb. 18 about 2 a.m. in the 5400 block of 25th Street when he observed Ford walking on the wrong side of the roadway, and he attempted to conduct a pedestrian stop.
Thibodeaux said in his sworn statement that Ford did not respond to him and fled the scene.
Thibodeaux said he followed Ford in his patrol car on 25th Street, when Ford jumped a chain link fence, fell on the other side, then ran down Crescent Avenue.
The officers were not able to take Ford into custody then, but Thibodeaux was able to positively identify him from previous encounters with Ford.
Officers also found an iPhone 7 and Taurus 9mm handgun laying on the ground near where he jumped the chain link fence. The iPhone had a picture of Ford and his daughter on the screen, according to the officer’s statement.
When Ford was later taken into custody and questioned, he first told police that he had been at a girl’s apartment from 1:30 a.m. to 10 a.m. and then changed his story and said he was stopped by police around 4 a.m., which conflicted with the officers’ reports.
The very next day, Feb. 19 at 9:49 a.m., the Groves Fire Department responded to an apartment fire in the 5300 block of Gulfway Drive.
Groves Police arson investigators determined the fire was intentionally started in the bedroom on top of the bed with clothes and paper, according to the probable cause affidavid. Food was scattered around the kitchen and the smoke detector battery removed, likely before the fire started.
Officers suspected Ford started the fire because the apartment tenant told officers that she is Ford’s ex-girlfriend. Although they have a child together, the relationship had become violent, according to what she said in court documents.
She told police that Ford threatened her via text message and assaulted her the night before. Officers observed and made note of visible marks on her face and neck while they talked to her about the apartment fire. Before the fire, she had reported the assault to the Groves Police Department.
She said Ford texted her that night before the fire: “You gonna make me do something.”
Because of his threats, she told police she stayed with her mother the night of Feb. 18.
She also told investigators that she knew Ford was able to enter the apartment by forcing open the sliding glass door.
Ford’s ex-girlfriend identified him in surveillance footage police obtained from her apartments the night before, according to the probable cause affidavit.
An indictment is not evidence of guilt.
Eleanor Skelton 