North Bay Crime Spree Suspect Wanted Asylum, Sympathized With Bombers
GREENBRAE (KPIX 5) -- Police said a man arrested for two carjackings in the North Bay was a Boston bombing sympathizer intent on reaching the Russian consulate in San Francisco. But his plan to seek asylum at the consulate came to a screeching halt.
According to police, 30-year old Jeffrey Boyce carjacked a BMW station wagon at gunpoint in Rohnert Park Monday afternoon.
Authorities said the suspect ordered the victim to drive to a nearby church and to a shopping center. Boyce then got out of the car and pulled several rifles from a truck he drove to the parking lot before the carjacking, placing them in the victim's car. The victim was able to escape.
Around 6:50 p.m. Monday, the Central Marin Police Authority received a call of a man who walked up to a woman's truck, demanding her vehicle at the Bon Air shopping center in Greenbrae.
North Bay Crime Spree Suspect Wanted Asylum, Sympathized With Bombers
"He opened the door and I was like, 'Hey, what are you doing?' and he pulled a gun out of his left pocket and just put it up in my face," Tina Humphrey of Mill Valley told KPIX 5.
While Humphrey did her best to keep an attempted carjacker calm, she didn't know was a Bay Area-wide manhunt was already underway.
As Humphrey tried to calm the suspect down, she waited for 15 minutes until a passerby called 911. During that time she tried to show pictures of her children.
After someone called for help, Humphrey continued to talk calmly to the man who had tried to carjack her.
"When he heard the sirens he said, 'you shouldn't have done that…I'm going to take you out.' And I said, 'What would that prove?'" Humphrey recalled. "He said, 'I'm going to die anyway.' And earlier he said, 'might as well go out with a bang, right?'"
Police said the suspect became spooked and fled on foot. Officers captured the suspect, identified as Boyce, a short distance away.
According to authorities, Boyce's mother had called in to warn police that he had been raving that the government was out to get him.
"She had indicated that he had talked about the recent bombing in Boston, as well as Colorado, and Columbine," said Captain Greg McEachern of the San Francisco Police Department.
"She didn't say he had a history of mental illness, she just said that in the last couple of weeks he'd become extremely unstable and was ranting about the government, and she was concerned for him," McEachern said.
Police believed he was on the way to the Russian consulate in San Francisco possibly to seek asylum and indicated that he was sympathetic to the Boston bombers in his ramblings. "We can assume by that that he was probably sympathetic to some of the actions earlier and was going there to seek asylum," McEachern said.
Officers surrounded the consulate Monday night.
A police source close to the investigation told KPIX 5 that Boyce is wanted by Oregon State Police for a homicide that happened Sunday. When we contacted the state police, they had no comment.
"He said he already took somebody out yesterday," Humphrey said. "And then I heard the cops mentioning that he was wanted as a homicide suspect."
Police said the case is under further investigation, due to the severity of the case and the multiple jurisdictions involved.
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