The [Ghanaian] man wanted in the fatal shooting of an undercover police detective in Northeast Washington is cooling his heels this morning in a federal lock-up in Manhattan.
Kofi Orleans-Lindsay was arrested shortly before 1 a.m. today without incident on a Brooklyn street.
Two Washington television stations say authorities had been tracking his cell phone use. D.C. police won’t comment, other than to say that he had “been under surveillance.”
District detective Michael Pavlik says Orleans-Lindsay was arrested by FBI agents and NYPD officers, with detectives from the Maryland State Police and the D.C. Police Department also taking part.
Pavlik spoke as he, another D.C. detective and two Maryland State Police officers were racing from D.C. police headquarters to catch a 3 a.m. train for New York.
Pavlik said shortly before 2 a.m. that he had taken the call from a D.C. detective in New York less than an hour earlier.
The call came in to a now-disbanded “war room” set up at District police headquarters to coordinate the search for the killer of Maryland State Police Corporal Edward Toatley.
Asked about the reaction to the news, Pavlik replied “there was a lot of crying in the room.”
Orleans-Lindsay had been the subject of a massive manhunt since Toatley was killed October 30th as he sat in a van in Northeast Washington.
Police say Toatley, an undercover drug detective, had just given Orleans-Lindsay several thousand dollars for drugs when Orleans-Lindsay shot Toatley in the head.
Police have said they do not think Orleans-Lindsay realized at the time that Toatley was an undercover officer.
