A 66-year-old Willcox man is now charged with a federal crime in addition to multiple state charges in Texas after he stopped his pickup truck in front of several Army National Guard vans last week near Lubbock and held 11 uniformed Guard personnel at gunpoint because he thought they had kidnapped two people.
Larry Lee Harris has yet to appear in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, but a federal magistrate has unsealed the criminal complaint which charges Harris with a felony count of assaulting a federal officer with a deadly weapon on March 22.
Harris remains held in the Lubbock County jail on more than $40,000 bail for 11 counts of unlawful restraint of the National Guard members, as well as one count each of interference with Texas military forces and unlawful carrying of a weapon.
The current state charges are all misdemeanors, but Arizona Daily Independent has learned the Lubbock County District Attorney’s Office plans to present Harris’ case to a county grand jury next month for possible felony charges.
Harris has been assigned a court-appointed attorney in Texas and that attorney is expected to request a mental competency examination as the case moves along. But even if Harris posted bail, he would not be released because the U.S. Marshals Service has filed a detainer hold related to the federal case.
According to the federal criminal complaint, the unarmed Army National Guard members were transporting COVID-19 vaccine doses on March 22 when Harris came to believe the vans was concealing two females. Harris pulled his truck alongside one of the Guard vehicles about 12 miles from Lubbock, then he brandished a handgun to the driver.
“That van and the two other vans all stopped on the side of North I-27,” HSI Special Agent Sergio Guerra wrote in the complaint. “ANG personnel said Harris identified himself as a detective as he approached their vehicle with his firearm drawn. Harris spoke to ANG personnel about a missing 41-year-old woman and 12-year-old girl and demanded to search the convoy vehicles.”
Once Harris searched the vans he drove away, but then turned his pickup truck back toward the convoy, Guerra wrote.
“Harris demanded to search the engine compartment of one of the vans,” Guerra’s complaint states. “(Idalou Police Department) arrived on scene shortly thereafter and took Harris into custody without further incident.”
Court records also show investigators seized a handgun and multiple magazines. The federal complaint makes no mention of why Harris was in Texas or how he came to believe a woman and a girl had been kidnapped.