BAYTOWN, Texas (AP) - A man who fatally shot a Houston-area deputy constable outside a county courthouse last week killed himself the next day, police said Monday.
William Kenny, 64, was the man who shot Harris County Precinct 3 Assistant Chief Deputy Clinton Greenwood on April 3 moments after Greenwood arrived for work, Baytown police Lt. Steve Dorris said at a news conference. The attack prompted a massive manhunt.
Dorris said investigators hadn’t identified Kenny as the gunman until late Sunday and had been searching for him Monday when they discovered he already was dead. Authorities determined he shot himself on April 4 outside Houston’s Ben Taub Hospital, where the Harris County Medical Examiner’s Office took jurisdiction of his body. Spokeswoman Tricia Bentley said the autopsy was completed the following day and a funeral home designated by Kenny’s family picked it up Friday.
The gun used to shoot Greenwood was the same one Kenny used to kill himself, Dorris said.
Greenwood, a 30-year law enforcement veteran, was working for a Harris County constable’s office when he was killed, but had previously worked for the county sheriff’s office, the county prosecutor’s office and in private practice as a lawyer.
Dorris declined to reveal a motive for the shooting, explaining that the investigation is ongoing, and said investigators are still working to determine why Greenwood was targeted. He said Kenny had filed complaints with the county sheriff’s department, but authorities didn’t reveal the nature of the complaints.
The Houston Chronicle reported, however, that Kenny had filed a complaint over a dispute with his now-ex-wife over family photos. The paper cited unnamed sources in reporting that Kenney filed a complaint with the sheriff’s department because deputies declined to arrest his wife, who had taken the photos. Greenwood, as head of internal affairs decisions at the time, opted not to pursue the case.
After Greenwood’s death, authorities had placed a former district attorney under armed protection as a precaution.
The Chronicle reported last week that a source said Greenwood, 57, had emailed the Harris County Attorney’s Office last month, saying he felt threatened by a man he had once targeted in a corruption investigation. The source asked not to be identified because of the nature of the investigation.
The gunman had stepped out from behind a dumpster as Greenwood, a married father of four, exited his SUV after arriving for work at a courthouse complex in Baytown.
Dorris said surveillance video showing a car outside the courthouse east of Houston was instrumental in leading investigators to Kenny. He described a painstaking process over the last week to review video at the courthouse and also other video in the area used by convenience stores and others.
“That was one of the reasons is took so long to get us to where we are,” he said.
Video at a convenience store provided a clear photo of Kenny, Dorris said, and investigators determined the vehicle was a rental and that it had been rented by Kenny.
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This story has been updated to correct that Kenny’s body had been found last week and to correct the spelling of his name to Kenny, per medical examiner.
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