Pennsylvania motel standoff ends with 1 dead, 2 in custody
TREVOSE, Pa. - Police seeking someone on a parole violation stumbled upon another man and a woman who were wanted in a double homicide in North Carolina -- and that man is dead after a motel standoff in Pennsylvania, authorities said Saturday.
CBS affiliate KYW reported the situation began around 3 p.m. at the Knights Inn on the 2700 block of Lincoln Highway in Trevose, outside Philadelphia.
Bensalem public safety director Fred Harran said the couple, 34-year-old Lloyd Wayne Franklin and Jennifer Lanning, 38, had picked up a hitchhiker who turned out to be wanted in an auto theft case.
"They picked up the wrong hitchhiker," Harran said. "Criminals picking up criminals... bad luck for all of them."
Police said when officers tried to take the hitchhiker, James Miller, into custody, Franklin -- assuming police were looking for him -- opened fire.
The officers were not struck and did not return fire, police said.
Miller and Lanning were taken into custody to end the standoff after several hours. Franklin was found dead with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
"Sounds like a bad movie," Harran told KYW.
The sheriff's office in Davidson County, North Carolina, said Saturday that Franklin and Lanning have been on the lam since Oct. 29, when police found the bodies of Davie Lee McSwain, 82, and his wife, Joan McSwain, 78, in their Thomasville home and their minivan missing.
Authorities believe Davie McSwain shot Franklin before he died. After Franklin fled with a gun stolen from the home, police say, he picked up Lanning and the two stole prescription painkillers during pharmacy robberies in Aberdeen and Roanoke Rapids, North Carolina, and Georgetown, South Carolina, before apparently heading north, picking up Miller along the way.