Last Updated: June 13. 2011 9:42PM
Woman involved in notorious 1987 Inkster shootout dies
Francis X. Donnelly/ The Detroit News

Ypsilanti— A woman involved with her three sons in a notorious shootout in 1987 that left three Inkster police officers dead has died.

Alberta Easter, who was being held at Women's Huron Valley Correctional Facility in Ypsilanti, died Sunday shortly after being taken to St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Ann Arbor, a prisons spokesman said.

Easter, who was 93, died from natural causes, said Russ Marlan, spokesman for the state Department of Corrections.

The shootout occurred at an Inkster motel where Easter was living when the officers tried to arrest her and one of her sons for bouncing a $286 check.

After the officers were shot, Easter and three sons kept other police at bay during a 10-hour standoff that involved hundreds of rounds fired from the first-floor motel room.

Killed in the initial shootout were Officers Clay Hoover, 24, and Dan Dubiel, 36, and Sgt. Ira Parker, 41.

Hoover and Dubiel were shot 29 times each, according to testimony at the murder trial.

Easter and three sons were convicted of first-degree murder and given three life sentences apiece.

Two sons, William and Roy Lemons, remain in prison. The third, George Lemons, died in prison in 1996.

The killings, one of the most notorious police shootouts in Metro Detroit history, shocked the public because of the number of officers killed and the paltry reason for resisting arrest.

Easter and her sons were known as smalltime crooks who flitted from one scheme to another, according to testimony at their trial.

When Hoover and Dubiel arrived at the Bungalow Motel on Michigan Avenue to serve arrest warrants, the 69-year-old Easter insisted the warrant was wrong.

The officers called Parker and the shootings occurred shortly after Parker's arrival.

If Easter's family doesn't claim her body, she will be buried at the state prison cemetery in Jackson, Marlan said.
http://detnews.com/article/20110613/...424/1408/LOCAL