Published: July 14, 2007 11:03 pm            

Murder suspect caught here

Man surrenders after standoff lasting four hours

San Marcos — Fort Worth police say a man captured in a quiet San Marcos neighborhood on Friday fatally shot his girlfriend in the head a day earlier and fled to a friend’s house here.

As Hays County SWAT surrounded the house at 802 Hillyer Street at about 2 p.m., Clifford Charles Ford, 24, initially refused to come out but surrendered peacefully four hours later at about 6:15 p.m. Ford was arrested and taken to Brakenridge Hospital in Austin to be treated for what Fort Worth authorities call an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

Ford is accused of killing his girlfriend, Deshaun Calloway Johnson, 35, who was found shot dead in her southeast Fort Worth home on Thursday morning. Investigators said they found a suicide note written by Ford and signs of a struggle, according to affidavit Fort Worth police used to get a murder arrest warrant.

Local authorities learned Ford was in the area from Fort Worth police, said Leroy Opiela, spokesman for the Hays Sheriff’s Office, and “we went out there and put the grab on him.” SWAT, a joint city and county operation, did not use tear gas or other force to convince Ford to give himself up, Opiela said.

The house where he was found, near the dead-end of a hillside residential street, is leased by a friend of Ford’s from Mansfield. Johnson’s 1999 Oldsmobile Intrigue was found nearby, Opiela said.

When Johnson did not show up for work at a shaved ice shop Thursday morning, a co-worker went to her home, found a broken window and called police, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported. When police arrived, they saw blood through the window and entered, finding Johnson’s body in her bed with “various and multiple types of trauma about her body,” Lt. Dean Sullivan, a Fort Worth police spokesperson, told the newspaper.

“Inside the home, we found evidence of a physical altercations and that is consistent with our preliminary conclusion that this appears to be a family violence-related homicide,” Sullivan said.

The victim’s family told the newspaper that the couple had a volatile history and that Ford physically abused his girlfriend. As the families gathered outside Johnson’s house on Thursday, the Star-Telegram reports, Ford called his brother and said he was on his way to the murder scene to turn himself in. He never showed up.

Ford’s mother, Elisa Russell, said, “He said he didn’t do it. All I know is that she is here at the house and she is dead They need to get to the bottom of it before they start pointing fingers.”

Across the yard, Lavern Calloway, the victim’s aunt, said, “I know he did it. He abused her. Even her mama knows it. She’s over there saying, ‘Please don’t blame me.”

bradrollins@yahoo.com

        

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