DOUBTS ARISE ABOUT COP WHO REPORTED RESCUE EFFORT.

Byline: Associated Press 

The search for an infant supposedly thrown off a bridge into a river was suspended Friday as new questions arose about a police officer at the center of the mystery.

Narcotics Detective Billy Vasser, who claimed to have nearly rescued a baby from the Coosa River following an anonymous tip Tuesday, apparently has a history of getting involved in situations that provide him with opportunities to be a hero, sources told the Associated Press.

The search for the baby was suspended Friday for a lack of progress, and Vasser was placed on paid leave as the department's internal affairs division took over the investigation, Lt. Randy Phillips said.

Dozens of volunteers had been working round-the-clock since Tuesday, when police arrived at the river to find a sobbing Vasser sitting waist-deep in the water, clutching a tiny blue shirt trimmed with lace.

Vasser said he lost his grip on the child in the swift current, and police appeared certain at first that the report was valid.

``Everybody would like to hope it was a doll, but it wasn't. It was a baby,'' Phillips said Wednesday.

But rescue squad members searching for the child, along with some other officers, privately doubted many aspects of the story almost from the start, including how an infant's wet shirt could have come off.

Vasser was suspected a decade ago of starting two fires that he reported in unoccupied rooms at a motel where he worked, at a time when his father was a Fire Department commander, the sources said on condition of anonymity.

Former desk clerk Tom Bowman, who helped extinguish one of the blazes at the Holiday Inn in Attalla, said, ``His dad worked for the Fire Department and he wanted to be a fireman.''

A motel manager who spoke on condition of anonymity said Vasser was fired after the second fire and told to seek psychological counseling.

Juvenile records are sealed, but the state fire marshal's office said a 16-year-old was charged following a fire at the motel Aug. 12, 1986.

Vasser was 16 at the time. His father, the late Robert Vasser, was a commander with the Fire Department.

The department was unaware Vasser had any connection to the fires.

``He's just very exemplary. He's what you'd consider a rising star,'' said Phillips. In the last two years, Vasser has been honored as Officer of the Year and ``Outstanding Young Man of Alabama'' by a civic group.

CAPTION(S):

Photo: A colleague comforts narcotics Detective Billy Vasser who was found sobbing in the Coosa River, saying a baby had been swept away.

Associated Press