Heavyweight boxer Clifford Etienne jailed

from nola.com http://www.nola.com/newsflash/sports/index.ssf?/base/sports-0/1123796783283170.xml&storylist= BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Police said heavyweight boxer Clifford Etienne held up a check cashing business, fired a shot when a clerk failed to move fast enough and pulled a gun on officers as he tried to carjack two different vehicles with children inside. Etienne, who took up boxing while serving a prison sentence for armed robbery, was arrested Wednesday night as he tried to escape when the car he was driving ran up on a curb. He was being held Thursday in lieu of a $70,000 bond, according to the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff's Office. The 33-year-old was charged with one count each of attempted first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder of a police officer, and two counts each of armed robbery and second-degree kidnapping. Police spokesman Sgt. Don Kelly said Etienne allegedly fired one shot when a clerk failed to move fast enough during the robbery of the check cashing business Wednesday night. After running away with an undisclosed amount of cash, he tried to carjack a young woman with two children in her car, then a man who also had two children in his car, all while police chased him. "At various times he pointed his gun at the police officers and the man in the second carjacking," Kelly said. Kelly said Etienne tried to fire twice, but the gun malfunctioned. While serving a 40-year sentence at two Louisiana prisons, Etienne won the state prison boxing championship. He was paroled in 1998 after serving 10 years and became a professional boxer. He is best known for being knocked out by Mike Tyson in 49 seconds in 2003. During the final days of his second term in January 2004, Gov. Mike Foster denied a pardon to Etienne, citing the violence of his crimes. During a robbery spree with three other men in the 1980s, Etienne shot one man in the arm, then took two others to a remote soybean farm, forced them to strip and robbed them of about $1,000 and a gold watch.