Daily Mail
January 4, 2015
Phoenix police say two officers’ decision to pay for a troubled man’s restaurant tab led to his being arrested in his roommate’s stabbing death.
Sgt. Tommy Thompson said on Friday the officers went to The International House of Pancakes early on Wednesday morning where a man named Mykel Cantrel Cooper, 23, said he had no money to pay for his meal.
The officers concluded the man had some type of mental health issue, so they paid for his meal and tip and took him to a behavioral health facility rather than take him to jail, Thompson said.
At the facility at short time later, the man told staff there he’d done ‘something bad to his roommate’, Thompson said.
Police were contacted and went to his apartment, where they found the body of 29-year-old Steven Horkovy, who apparently had been killed Tuesday, Thompson said.
The police spokesman said detectives then arrested 23-year-old Mykel Cantrel Cooper on suspicion of first-degree murder.
According to a police charging document, Cooper told a detective he’d stabbed Horkovy after kicking open the roommate’s door and confronting him with a knife.