Ira Parker was a dedicated, 15-year veteran of the Inkster Police Department and a United States Air Force veteran who served in Vietnam. The 41-year-old Black / African American sergeant was a husband to his wife, Dorothy, and a father to four children: Trudy, Tracy, Ira Jr., and Timonty. His life of service was tragically cut short in an ambush that also claimed the lives of two of his fellow officers, leaving a community and a police force in a state of shock.
The call that led to the tragedy on July 9, 1987, was for a seemingly routine matter. Officers Daniel Dubiel, 36, and Clay Hoover, 25, arrived at the Bungalow Motel on Michigan Avenue in Inkster, a suburb of Detroit, shortly after 5 p.m. They were there to serve an arrest warrant on Alberta Easter, 69, and her son, Roy Lemons Jr., for writing a bad check for $286.40. The family, which included Easter and her three adult sons—Roy, William, and George Lemons—was also facing eviction from the motel for unpaid charges.
Inside their adjoining rooms, the situation was tense. George was seriously ill with failing kidneys, and the family was in a state of decline.
When Officers Dubiel and Hoover entered the room, Easter became enraged, insisting the matter was civil, not criminal. She demanded to see a supervisor, and the officers radioed for Sergeant Parker. A motel security guard who had accompanied the officers saw that the sons were armed and left to call for more police. He warned Parker upon his arrival that the men had "heavy firepower," but the sergeant was determined to do his duty. At about 5:45 p.m., just seconds after Sergeant Parker entered the room and reportedly touched Easter's elbow to escort her, her sons opened fire with a barrage of automatic gunfire and pistols. All three officers were killed almost instantly, each struck by multiple bullets. Ballistics would later reveal they were shot with their own service revolvers as well as the suspects' weapons.
What followed was a chaotic and violent 10-hour standoff. Roy Lemons ran out of the room and sprayed the motel parking lot with automatic gunfire before the motel owner returned fire, forcing him back inside. More than 100 officers from local departments, state troopers, and FBI agents converged on the scene, surrounding the motel. During the siege, the family fired hundreds of rounds from their barricaded rooms. Alberta Easter misled police negotiators for hours, even telling a television reporter in an interview that the officers were alive and being held hostage. The standoff finally ended around 3:30 a.m. after a local pastor, Rev. Jim Holley, helped persuade the family to surrender. Equipped with gas masks to counter the tear gas police had deployed, Easter and her three sons emerged from the room and were taken into custody. A search of the rooms uncovered at least ten guns.
The aftermath of the slayings brought an outpouring of grief and horror. On July 14, 1987, an estimated 3,000 police officers from across the country and Canada attended a memorial service for the fallen officers. The crime was, at the time, one of the deadliest attacks on law enforcement in the nation in years. The Inkster police force, a small department of only 45 officers, was devastated by the loss of three of its own.
Alberta Easter and her sons, Roy, William, and George Lemons, were charged with first-degree murder. During a 13-week trial that began in May 1988, the family claimed self-defense. However, in August 1988, a Wayne County Circuit Court jury found all four guilty. Each was sentenced to three mandatory life terms in prison without the possibility of parole. George Lemons died in prison in 1996 from his kidney problems. Alberta Easter, the matriarch of the family, died in prison of respiratory failure on June 12, 2011, at the age of 93. Her other two sons, William and Roy, remain incarcerated as of that date.
The sacrifice of Sergeant Ira Parker, Officer Daniel Dubiel, and Officer Clay Hoover has not been forgotten. The Inkster Police Department holds an annual candlelight vigil to honor their memory and that of another officer killed in the line of duty years later. A granite monument was unveiled in 2002 to permanently honor the fallen heroes. As one speaker at a recent vigil stated, “There is no greater love than when a man will lay down his life for a friend. These gentlemen truly made the ultimate sacrifice for this community.”
