Lubbock mayor will come apologize to Bibbs, husband, assistant for arrest ordeal
Saying it was a case of “mistaken identity,” the police chief of Lubbock, Tex., yesterday exonerated Hampton University women’s basketball coach Patricia Bibbs, her husband and an assistant coach of allegedly perpetrating a con game Monday.
Chief Ken Walker said during a news conference that no charges will be filed.
“It is unfortunate that visitors to our city were apparently in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Walker said, “but I want to reinforce the fact that our officers lawfully initiated the inquiry and conducted the investigation by the book and with complete professionalism.”
He also denied allegations by the three and the president of the Lubbock chapter of the NAACP that race was a factor in their treatment by police. “We would have handled the case the same way if the suspects had been Hispanic or Anglo or any other ethnic origin,” Walker said.
According to police, the three were accused of trying a con game called the “pigeon drop.” In the ruse, a con artist says he or she has found a purse with a lot of money and tries to persuade the victim to put up money to retain a lawyer so that they both can lay claim to the purse.
Although the woman on whom the con game was perpetrated identified assistant coach Vanetta Kelso as the con artist who approached her, Walker said yesterday that a second woman reported to police on Wednesday that two women had attempted to pull the same money scam on her in the Wal-Mart parking lot three hours earlier Monday. Walker said the second victim could not identify the Hampton coaches from pictures she was shown Wednesday. The police then reviewed for hours in-store and parking lot security tapes.
At news conference at the historically black Virginia school, Bibbs said no other outcome was possible because, “We knew we had done nothing wrong.” But Bibbs also said she still feels a sense of loss after being placed in handcuffs and taken to jail for something she did not do. “I feel something has been taken away,” she said.
In a telephone interview, Hampton President William R. Harvey said he has hired attorney Johnnie Cochran and two Texas attorneys to “provide the university with {possible} legal remedies . . . and I’ll listen to their advice.”
The Texas authorities “knew they were innocent, we knew they were innocent and now the world knows they are innocent,” Harvey said.
At a news conference, Harvey said Lubbock Mayor Wendy Sitton told him she would come to the university today to personally apologize.
Bibbs, her husband, Ezell, and Kelso were handcuffed by police in the parking lot outside their hotel, which was three blocks from the Wal-Mart store, and taken into custody. At a news conference Wednesday in Hampton, they said they never were read their rights and were not told for hours what crime they allegedly had committed. They were in Lubbock for the Pirates to play No. 12 Texas Tech on Tuesday night. The game was canceled.
