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.)