Crawford was shopping at the Beavercreek, Ohio, Walmart on Aug. 6, and at some point, he allegedly picked up one of the air rifles sold by the retail chain.
What’s known definitively is that the police were called in response to Crawford, and when they arrived, they shot him fatally. His partner, LeeCee Johnson, was also in the store at the time — the two were in different sections of the retail giant, and were talking on the phone at the time of the shooting, according to the Dayton Daily News.
We was just talking. He said he was at the video games playing videos and he went over there by the toy section where the toy guns were. And the next thing I know, he said ‘It’s not real,’ and the police start shooting and they said ‘Get on the ground,’ but he was already on the ground because they had shot him. And I could hear him just crying and screaming. I feel like they shot him down like he was not even human.
An attorney for the Ohio man’s family, who was allowed to see surveillance video of the Aug. 5 incident, claims that the young father was leaning on the pellet gun and talking on the phone, with his back toward officers, when he was “shot on sight.”
Wright says the video shows Crawford standing in the direction of some shelves. He say Crawford was talking on his cell phone and probably did not see or hear the police officer sent to the store to investigate. He said in one frame you see Crawford on the phone, the next you see him on the floor.
Ritchie continued to maintain that Crawford was “waving (the gun) around.” But an attorney for Crawford’s family who has seen Walmart surveillance video of the incident and the minutes leading up to the shooting says the video shows nothing of the kind.
Michael Wright said that the video shows Crawford walking while on the phone, with the BB gun pointed at the floor, except for one moment in which he casually swung the toy gun up to his shoulder.
Ritchie said that he was also shown the video by prosecutors, which Wright called “very improper.” Witness stories must be based solely on their personal recollections of an incident, the lawyer said.
Wright said that in the video, no other customers appeared to pay much notice to Crawford and the BB gun. But Ritchie said he felt threatened by Crawford, as did his wife, leading to the 911 call. Ritchie was the only person to call 911 from the Walmart.
This guy was shot from behind several times (as he was attacking the officers)… Witnesses say Utah man killed by police was running away, attorney says - LA Times
Sounds like he might have had some developmental/emotional issues A boy in a man’s body, Mr Hunt was still coming to terms with life after their family fled an abusive relationship three years ago, she said. Kid was walking around with a decorative samurai sword on his back – witnesses claim that he just ran from the cops (cops claim that he attacked them).
The authorities also said that the two police officers involved in the shooting of Darrien Hunt last Wednesday had not yet been interviewed about the incident. The attorney for Hunt’s family described this delay as “almost incomprehensible”.
“We haven’t even interviewed the officers yet,” said Taylor. “We’ve talked briefly with them just to kind of get an idea of what the scene was at the time.” He said officers were typically interviewed within 48-72 hours of a shooting. One is now scheduled to be interviewed on Tuesday and the other on Thursday, more than a week after the shooting, he said.
Edwards said over the weekend that the family’s private autopsy had found Hunt was shot six times from behind. He was hit once in a shoulder, once in the back, once in an elbow, twice in a leg and once in a hand, according to the attorney.
“The shot that killed Darrien, which was straight in the back, did not have an exit wound,” Edwards told the Guardian. “It raises the question as to how you can lunge at someone and be shot in the back at the same time.”
It’s incomprehensible. The person who called 911 should be jailed for criminal negligence, and then sued in a civil court. Some choice quotes:
When Ronald Ritchie called 911 from the aisles of a Walmart in western Ohio last month to report that a black man was “walking around with a gun in the store”, he said that shoppers were coming under direct threat.
“He’s, like, pointing it at people,” Ritchie told the dispatcher. Later that evening, after John Crawford III had been shot dead by one of the police officers who hurried to the scene in Beavercreek, Ritchie repeated to reporters: “He was pointing at people. Children walking by.”
Well, at least he’s a reliable and consistent witness.
One month later, Ritchie puts it differently. “At no point did he shoulder the rifle and point it at somebody,”
Oh. Well, at least he’s a reliable character
Ritchie told several reporters after the 5 August shooting that he was an “ex-marine”. When confronted with his seven-week service record, however, he confirmed that he had been quickly thrown out of the US marine corps in 2008 after being declared a “fraudulent enlistment”
Ya the uber-marine seems directly responsible for creating the situation that led to Crawford’s death. I wonder what charges could realistically be brought against him? I’m sure that a civil case would certainly find him responsible.
I guess a woman walked by Crawford with her two kids just moments before he was shot – she said that she didn’t really even notice him (sure sounds like he was quite menacing).
“Police said he didn’t obey commands to put down what turned out to be an air rifle he apparently had taken off a shelf.”
He forgot to check for the label “for white people only” on the toy shelf. How dare a black people pick a toy from the store that clearly isn’t for blacks?
“He was the catalyst, if you will, in the whole sequence of events leading up to my son’s death,” John Crawford Jr told the Guardian. “It was a crank call. He excited the call, and exaggerated the call, and frankly it was just a bunch of lies.”
