Oakland Cop-Killer Had Long Rap Sheet

The man responsible for the deaths of four Oakland police officers over the weekend had an extensive criminal history, the Tribune reports. Lovelle Mixon, 26, spent 5 years in prison for a 2002 assault with a firearm. After he was paroled, he was a suspect in a 2007 murder; though police couldn’t make the case, he was sent back to prison for parole violations.

Mixon, frustrated with the parole system, had apparently resolved to go back to prison; he skipped a mandatory meeting with his parole officer in February, and was a fugitive at the time of his disastrous run-in with police. “He didn’t know really where to start,” his widow said. “He was trying to make himself a better person and trying to realize his mistakes and what he was doing was wrong.” (More Oakland stories.)