The cold-blooded murder of four police officers in the Pacific Northwest of America could thwart the presidential ambitions of Mike Huckabee, the early Republican front-runner for 2012.

Hundreds of police were hunting yesterday for the suspected killer, Maurice Clemmons, a handyman who would still be in prison had Mr Huckabee, while Governor of Arkansas, not commuted his 95-year sentence for aggravated burglary in 2000.

The controversial pardon, issued over the objections of prosecutors, could jeopardise a new presidential bid by Mr Huckabee, who is the current favourite among Republican voters to challenge Barack Obama for the White House.

The authorities put up a $125,000 (£75,000) reward for information leading to Clemmons’s arrest after the police botched the hunt for the alleged killer by laying siege to an empty trailer home for 11 hours.

Clemmons allegedly walked into the Forza coffee shop in a suburb of Tacoma, Washington State, on Sunday and shot dead four police officers, including a woman, all wearing bulletproof vests. They were on their laptop computers preparing for their morning shift when the gunman approached the bar, pulled a gun from his coat and began shooting.

Police called the killings a “targeted, selective ambush” that left other customers and staff unharmed. Two of the officers were killed immediately; the third was shot dead after standing up to challenge the gunman, and the fourth fired a shot that apparently wounded him in the torso. “He has suffered a gunshot wound,” Ed Troyer, of the Pierce County sheriff’s department, told reporters.

Police besieged a Seattle trailer home on Sunday night believing that Clemmons was trapped inside. Negotiators made loudspeaker announcements appealing to him to go outside, before detonating stun grenades and sending a robot inside. Police initially suggested that Clemmons may have died from his wounds in the home but when a Swat team moved in yesterday morning it found no evidence that he had been there.

Officers later began searching the campus of the University of Washington after a tip that Clemmons had been seen getting off a bus there. But they gave up that hunt.

Clemmons, 37, who ran a landscaping and power-washing business from his home, has a long criminal record and a history of mental illness.

He was charged in May with punching a police officer in the face after neighbours reported that he had been throwing rocks at houses and cars in the area.

Two days later he allegedly gathered his wife and two young relatives at his home in the middle of the night and ordered them to undress. He said that families needed to “be naked for at least five minutes on Sunday”, according to a police report. “The whole time Clemmons kept saying things like trust him, the world is going to end soon, and that he was Jesus,” the report said.

His sister told police that she suspected that he was having a mental breakdown. Family members said that he expected President Obama to visit him to “confirm that he is Messiah in the flesh”.

During their investigation, police found evidence that Clemmons had molested a 12-year-old female relative and charged him with second-degree child rape. He was released from jail only last week after a bondsman named “Jail Sucks Bail Bonds” put up all but 10 per cent of his $150,000 bail.

During a search of a home where he is believed to have stayed, police found an electronic tracking anklet that he was required to wear under the terms of his release.

Clemmons had at least five criminal convictions in his native Arkansas before moving to Washington State in 2004, where he was classified by the state Department of Corrections as a “high risk to reoffend”.

In 1989 Clemmons, then 17, was convicted of aggravated robbery in his former home of Little Rock, Arkansas. He was paroled in 2000 after Mr Huckabee commuted his 95-year sentence, citing his youth. Clemmons later violated his parole and was sent back to prison but was released in 2004 without serving his full term.

Mr Huckabee was criticised during his 2008 presidential campaign for granting too many clemencies as governor. The release of Clemmons could become a potent issue in a 2012 run.

The Republican presidential hopeful, now a TV commentator, tried to distance himself from the latest killings in a statement on his website. “Should he be found to be responsible for this horrible tragedy, it will be the result of a series of failures in the criminal justice system in both Arkansas and Washington State,” he said.

“He was recommended for and received a commutation of his original sentence from 1990. This commutation making him parole eligible and was paroled by the parole board once they determined he met the conditions at that time.

“He was arrested later for parole violation and taken back to prison to serve his full term but prosecutors dropped the charges that would have held him.”

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