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Toronto librarian accused of being wanted Panther<br>
<a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040729/COLDCASE29/TPNational/TopStories" eudora="autourl">http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040729/COLDCASE29/TPNational/TopStories<br><br>
</a>By JEFF GRAY AND JONATHAN FOWLIE<br><br>
UPDATED AT 3:25 PM EDT Thursday, Jul 29, 2004 <br><br>
<br>
He worked as a researcher among the quiet stacks of the Toronto Reference
Library for more than a decade, supporting a wife and children. But
55-year-old Douglas Freeman -- whose real name is Joseph Coleman Pannell
-- is accused of hiding a secret, violent past.<br><br>
Mr. Pannell, police in Chicago say, is a former member of the Black
Panther Party wanted for attempted murder in the shooting of a police
officer four times at point-blank range in 1969 at the height of the
radical group's notoriety.<br><br>
On Tuesday night, those past allegations caught up with Mr. Pannell.
Around 8:30 p.m., a special Toronto fugitive squad arrested him outside
the library as he approached his car.<br><br>
Eight officers and two police dogs were deployed, but at a press
conference yesterday, RCMP Corporal Tony Gollub said Mr. Pannell did not
resist arrest. He even told police he had been "preparing for this
day for over 30 years . . . and he was still surprised."<br><br>
RCMP Sergeant Warren Gherasim said the U.S. Federal Bureau of
Investigation and Department of Justice contacted authorities in Canada
in the past few weeks.<br><br>
They asked them to search for matches to Mr. Pannell's fingerprints,
which were taken when he was arrested in Chicago in 1969.<br><br>
Sgt. Gherasim said the prints matched those in Canadian records taken for
what he would only call "a customs offence" committed by Mr.
Pannell, known then as Douglas Freeman, in 1983. Investigators then
traced him to his workplace, he said.<br><br>
Little is known about Mr. Pannell's life in Canada, although police said
he has a spouse and children here. He apparently lived in Montreal for
several years before moving to Toronto and getting a job with the Toronto
Public Library. Police said yesterday that he had an Ontario driver's
licence in his assumed name.<br><br>
Several employees at the Toronto Reference Library said yesterday they
had never heard of Mr. Freeman. And yesterday, the library's e-mail
system did not appear to list his name. A spokeswoman would confirm only
that the library is co-operating with police.<br><br>
On March 7, 1969, 21-year-old patrolman Terrence Knox was driving his
marked car in the Kensington District of Chicago when he saw a
19-year-old man on the street.<br><br>
"I stopped him and asked him why he wasn't in school," the
retired officer recalled yesterday afternoon in an interview, "and
for some reason he decided to shoot me."<br><br>
Mr. Knox said the 19-year-old pulled out a 9-mm gun and shot several
times into the window of the squad car, hitting the Chicago officer in
the right arm and severing a major artery.<br><br>
Chicago press coverage at the time said Mr. Pannell was originally from
Washington and that he was AWOL from the U.S. Navy, a detail Mr. Knox
confirmed yesterday.<br><br>
Mr. Knox, who at 21 was the youngest Chicago policeman to have been shot,
said that he blacked out almost immediately and that his last memory of
the incident is of watching the teenager back away from the
car.<br><br>
Still, he has been told a great deal about what happened that day, and
said yesterday he was thankful for the quick work of a nearby officer on
a motorcycle who stopped to help.<br><br>
"[He] put his finger in my arm to stop my artery from pumping blood
out," Mr. Knox said last night. "Had he not done that I know I
would have been dead on the street," he added, explaining he had
seen photos showing the immense pools of blood at the scene.<br><br>
Despite that prompt help, however, Mr. Knox came very close to losing his
life that day.<br><br>
"According to the police, I was given the last rites at the
hospital," he said, still clearly affected by the incident.
"When you are told you're dead and you live from 1969 on, every day
is a blessing."<br><br>
Doctors, who at first thought they would have to amputate Mr. Knox's arm,
performed experimental surgery, using different parts of his body to fix
the injuries.<br><br>
However, the officer, who retired in 1977, said that to this day the
injuries are quite painful and that he has only minimal feeling in the
bottom part of his right arm because of all the nerve damage.<br><br>
When asked whether he has any message for the man accused of shooting him
so many years ago, Mr. Knox simply said "I hope I never have an
opportunity to say anything to him other than in the court
system."<br><br>
Mr. Knox said he first heard of the arrest on Tuesday night by phone.
"It's very good for me and it's very good to see the cold case squad
in Chicago working with the FBI and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and
Interpol," he said.<br><br>
Although the case is more than 35 years old, Mr. Knox said it has never
left him. "He's been in my mind every day," he said.
"Whoever's been shot never forgets it."<br><br>
When asked how else the incident has changed his life, Mr. Knox quipped,
"I've never asked another man in my lifetime why he wasn't in
school."<br><br>
News reports show that Mr. Pannell was arrested after the shooting and
charged with attempted murder and aggravated battery. He was freed on a
$5,000 cash bond, which was later forfeited when he failed to show up in
court in May of 1971.<br><br>
In 1973, Mr. Knox, then a member of the intelligence division, arrested
Mr. Pannell, and he put up $10,000 of $100,000 bail. Mr. Pannell vanished
again, however, failing to show up in court on Dec. 21, 1973, again
forfeiting his bail.<br><br>
In an unusual ruling the next year, a judge awarded Mr. Knox the $10,000
bond money that the accused man forfeited when he fled. Mr. Knox had
filed a civil suit against Mr. Pannell in absentia.<br><br>
The Black Panthers, founded by activists Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in
Oakland in 1966, was a revolutionary black nationalist movement that
rejected the integrationist vision of the more mainstream civil rights
movement.<br><br>
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