...Suspect Not Remembered as Violent Type

Dozens of state, federal and city law enforcement officers pressed the search yesterday for the killer of an undercover Maryland state trooper as details emerged of a suspect whose previous troubles did not seem to point to violence.

Acting on a flood of tips and reported sightings, FBI agents and officers from the Maryland State Police and the Prince George's County and D.C. police forces focused on the District in the hunt for convicted drug dealer Kofi Apea Orleans-Lindsay, said D.C. Assistant Police Chief William McManus. He said there are "50 or so people working around the clock" on the case.

Although the shooting Monday night of Trooper 1st Class Edward M. Toatley during a prearranged drug buy in Northeast Washington was captured on videotape, investigators are still uncertain whether Orleans-Lindsay acted alone or received help from others, said Col. David B. Mitchell, superintendent of the Maryland State Police.

Meeting in the officer's unmarked sport utility vehicle, Orleans-Lindsay accepted $ 3,000, departed as if to get the drugs and returned minutes later with a gun. Videotape cameras and microphones inside the vehicle captured the shooting.

Orleans-Lindsay then slipped into a nearby patch of woods, escaping on foot, although a backup team had been monitoring the transaction from a van down the street. Toatley, a 16-year-veteran and father of three, died about 2 1/2 hours later at Washington Hospital Center.

Orleans-Lindsay, who was charged in warrants Tuesday with first-degree murder while armed, evidently intended to rob another drug dealer and kill him, Mitchell said. He gave no sign that he knew he was shooting a police officer, police said.

Hours before the shooting, the suspect parked his silver Mercedes at Fourth and Aspen streets NW and climbed into the officer's vehicle. The two then drove around at Orleans-Lindsay's directions before stopping to close the deal at Queens Chapel Road and Douglas Street NE, nearly five miles from Orleans-Lindsay's car.

Yesterday, police were combing through Orleans-Lindsay's arrest record for clues to his whereabouts and turning up the heat on other suspected drug dealers in the city in the hopes that rivals would turn him in. District police also are reopening the files on unsolved killings of drug dealers to see whether Orleans-Lindsay might have been involved.

"He is public enemy No. 1 from every angle right now--from the street, and from the police," Mitchell said. Likely escape routes, such as airports and other transportation terminals, were under watch.

Orleans-Lindsay was arrested in September 1996 for dealing crack cocaine and convicted in April 1997. He received three years probation, which he violated several times by testing positive for drugs, neglecting to provide evidence that he was attending work or school, and failing to report to probation, according to court documents. Arrested on drug charges in December 1997 and September 1998, he received probation again in June 1999 after entering a plea bargain. Despite his record, some people who knew Orleans-Lindsey expressed surprise at his alleged involvement in the officer's killing.

"He's a nice guy," said R. William Hale, a lawyer who handled Orleans-Lindsay's first drug case in 1996. "If somebody had asked me a few years ago, when I represented him, I would have said he'd turn right and go straight."

Orleans-Lindsay, a native of Ghana, attended Blair High School in Silver Spring but didn't graduate.

"I'm very surprised by all this," said Karrie McRoy, the mother of two young children by Orleans-Lindsay. The two had a relationship for 3 1/2 years, she said as she stood at the door of her grandmother's house in Rockville, but have not had contact for about nine months.

"I know he's not the type of person who would do this to anyone," she said. "He was a nice, respectable, average guy. . . . He wasn't a violent person."

McRoy, 26, said Orleans-Lindsay was a good father for a while. The two lived together for a time in Silver Spring, and he eventually got a job at a grocery store.

Yet their relationship ended about a year ago, and all contact ceased after the birth of their second child, named Kofi after his father. The couple also have a 2-year-old girl.

McRoy, who works as an escort at the National Institutes of Health, said she filed a paternity suit against Orleans-Lindsay eight months ago. "He wasn't doing his job as a father," she said.

Yesterday, FBI Director Louis J. Freeh telephoned the Maryland State Police superintendent to extend his condolences, Mitchell said. Mitchell also visited with Toatley's wife and family yesterday afternoon at the trooper's home in suburban Baltimore before heading to the D.C. police station where the search is being coordinated.

"She always knew there is a risk there," Mitchell said. "Inez said to me today, tearfully, 'Eddie died doing absolutely what he loved.' "