By Michael Gordon
A few weeks after her son was
shot to death by a Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer, Georgia Ferrell said
he visited her in a dream.
“Jonathan, I’m OK. Are you OK?”
she said she asked him.
He told her he was.
Asked whether she carried away
a message from the dream, Georgia Ferrell said this: “I know his spirit wants
justice, and his spirit wants peace.”
A year ago Sunday, Jonathan
Ferrell wrecked his car on an unfamiliar road. A toxicology report showed no
signs drugs, and while he had been drinking he was not drunk. He escaped the
car barefoot and without his cellphone. He sought help at a nearby house, but
his late-night and urgent knocking frightened the woman inside.
He then ran up to three
Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officers who had responded to the woman’s 911
call. Moments later, he was dead, and for the first time in at least 30 years,
a Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department officer was charged with a crime in
connection with an on-duty shooting.
On Saturday in Tallahassee,
Fla., Ferrell’s family laid flowers at his grave. On Sunday, they will host a
public celebration of his life, while offering young African-Americans
instruction on how to act around police.
“To be humble, how to protect
themselves,” Georgia Ferrell says, “These children are our future, and too many
of them are being taken out before their time.”
Ferrell says she hasn’t
followed the coverage of the shooting death of Michael Brown Jr., a black teen,
by Darren Wilson, a white policeman, in Ferguson, Mo., or the anger that has
simmered in the St. Louis suburb for more than a month.
She says she understands the
comparison between Brown’s death and her son’s and has sent word through
intermediaries that she is praying for Brown’s family.
“Things happen for a reason.
Things have to happen for the public to see what’s really going on,” she says.
“Jonathan would not be happy
with all the killing of black men. He’d like to see that they’re all being
treated equal. Treat him like he was a young white man. What’s so different
about the pigment of his skin?
“Find out what’s going on
before you pull a gun. We love our children, too.”
Law enforcement ties
Since middle school, Jonathan
Ferrell lovedthe same girl.
For most of his adult life, Wes
Kerrick dreamed of being a cop.
A year ago, those paths brought
the two men – both in their 20s, one black, the other white – face-to-face in a
suburban neighborhood outside Charlotte in northeast Mecklenburg.
Within seconds, Ferrell lay
dying from 10 bullets that came from Kerrick’s service weapon.
Later that same day, Kerrick,
who comes from a law-enforcement family, including a sister who also serves on
CMPD, was charged with voluntary manslaughter. He had less than three years
experience on the force at the time.
Ferrell, 24, was a former
Florida A&M football player who had moved to Charlotte to be with fiancee
Caché Heidel, his girlfriend since they were teenagers in Tallahassee, Fla., and
now a Charlotte accountant. He had been working two jobs to pay for classes at
Johnson C. Smith University, where he hoped to major in chemistry.
Kerrick remains suspended
without pay. His criminal trial, which is being prosecuted by the attorney
general’s office, is expected to take place next year. For now, a
wrongful-death lawsuit filed by Ferrell’s mother against Kerrick, the police
and local government remains on hold in federal court.
George Laughrun and Michael
Greene, Kerrick’s defense team, said neither they nor their client were
available for interviews.
In a prepared statement, the
lawyers said the past year has been “an extremely emotional and trying time.”
“Officer Kerrick and his family
have the utmost confidence in the criminal justice system as evidenced by the
many years of service that both he and his family have given to this and other
communities in the law enforcement field,” the statement says.
“Officer Kerrick acted in
conformity with the rules and procedures of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police
Department and with state law. The shooting of Jonathan Ferrell was tragic but
justified.”
‘Our son’
Government officials have said
little about the case from the start.
City Manager Ron Carlee
declined to comment last week, though his office did release a statement
reiterating the city’s intent to be “as respectful as possible to those
impacted by the tragedy.”
CMPD Chief Rodney Monroe and
his department also declined interview requests.
Monroe, who ordered Kerrick’s
arrest, said early on that his officer used bad judgment and excessive force –
even if Ferrell ran into him, as video from a police car at the scene
apparently shows. It was clear that Ferrell was unarmed, Monroe said, and
Kerrick’s decision to shoot was unlawful.
“Sometimes we have to put up
our hands and use our nightstick,” Monroe said. “... It can’t automatically
result in use of deadly force.”
Some law enforcement groups and
Kerrick supporters throughout the country accused Monroe of a rush to judgment
that could put other officers in jeopardy. They say Kerrick’s subsequent
indictment, which came after one grand jury declined to bring charges, was
politically motivated.
Ferrell’s family and some
community leaders around Charlotte, however, say Monroe headed off a worse
situation by acting with speed and openness.
While no two cities and
situations are the same, they compare police handling of the Ferrell shooting
with the details of Brown’s death in Missouri. There, no charges have been
filed, and angry and sometimes violent demonstrations raged.
Here, police quickly identified
Kerrick, charged him, and took responsibility for Ferrell’s death. After a
public outcry, the City Council also toughened citizen oversight of police
shootings. Monroe later said he used the incident to schedule training for his
officers on recognizing their biases.
The officers, in turn, asked
him for more instruction on hand-to-hand confrontations to avoid deadly force.
In the end, the first police
response to Ferrell’s death was key, says Charlotte minister Dr. Dwayne Walker.
That it followed ongoing CMPD efforts to establish what Walker describes as “a
culture of understanding” with the community made it doubly so.
“Chief Monroe put a human face
to a human life,” says Walker, pastor of the Little Rock AME Zion Church in
Charlotte, who describes Ferrell’s killing as a “murder.”
“Here, the city acknowledged
that a life was taken, a wrong was done. There is still rage, outrage that an
officer can unload his weapon at an unarmed man. But his police department
arrested him. A man’s life had meaning.”
Still no answers
Occurring between the deaths of
Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla., and Brown in Ferguson, Ferrell’s shooting drew
national headlines. It made the cover of Sports Illustrated, and next month is
scheduled to be the subject of a special report on ESPN.
Yet, many vital details of the
night remain closed to the public – from eyewitness statements to the video
shot with a patrol car camera.
Sometime after 2 a.m., Ferrell
wrecked his Toyota Camry in the Bradfield Farms community of northwest
Mecklenburg after giving a co-worker a ride home.
He kicked his way free of the
car, then walked to the nearest home.
Inside, a woman was alone with
her young child, her husband at work. The 911 recording captures the frantic
mother saying an unknown man had tried to break into her home. Monroe later
described Ferrell as “viciously” pounding on the front door.
A police call went out for an
attempted home invasion. Three officers, including Kerrick, responded.
According to police reports,
Ferrell ran up to the officers and ignored repeated calls to stop and get on
the ground. One of the officers fired his Taser but missed. Ferrell then veered
directly into Kerrick.
At some point Kerrick started
firing – 12 shots in all.
The other officers, both
African-American and with more experience than Kerrick, did not pull their
guns. Their accounts of the shooting remain sealed.
So does the 20-second dash-cam
video, which reportedly captured the moments leading up to the shooting. City
officials say Monroe ordered Kerrick’s arrest after he and his top staff
watched the footage. A judge has given the attorney general’s office control on
when an
d whether it is released.
A spokeswoman for the attorney
general’s office said Friday that showing the video prematurely could
compromise Kerrick’s right to a fair trial.
Citing the role a video played
in the domestic-abuse case against NFL player Ray Rice last week, Ferrell
family attorney Chris Chestnut again called for the release of the footage.
“Video speaks truth. What’s
there to hide?” said Chestnut, who saw the video shortly after the shooting.
“The truth is that it’s murder. On camera.”
Chestnut says Kerrick’s
behavior, not Ferrell’s, is on trial.
While the events marking Ferrell’s
death are 500 miles away, Walker says African-Americans in Charlotte will
grieve, too.
“I didn’t know Trayvon Martin,
but it hurts, and we felt the pain because if it could happen there, it could
happen here,” Walker says.
“Mr. Ferrell may not have been
a native son. But he was one of our sons.”
The story was updated on
Monday, Sept. 15, to correct an error about the toxicology report following
Jonathan Ferrell’s death. Ferrell had been drinking the night before his death,
but his blood-alcohol level was at .06, below the limit of being legally drunk.
Staff writer Cleve Wootson Jr.
contributed.
Family outraged after their pet
dog was shot by police
By Manolo Morales Published: September 12,
2014, 6:40 pm
A family is outraged and
demanding answers after their dog was shot by police and left to bleed for an
hour.
It happened a week ago in
Kalihi after officers responded to a domestic call in the area. As police
officers were about to leave, Bruce, a two-year-old Staffordshire Bull Terrier
mix, got loose from his cage and lunged at the officers, and then got shot.
When the family asked police if
they could take the dog to the veterinarian, they were told to stay put until
an investigation was completed.
The first thing KHON2 News
asked HPD was why the family was forced to wait. We were told it’s standard
policy to do a thorough investigation after an officer fires a weapon, so the
scene had to be preserved.
So we then asked that if this
were instead a person, would there be a delay in getting help?
Late Friday afternoon, a HPD
spokeswoman called back and said the officers made a mistake and should have
allowed the family to get medical help for the dog.
One week after being shot in
the chest, Bruce looks almost as good as new, although there are some stitches
that still need to help him heal.
His owners still can’t believe
what they had just gone through.
“It was terrifying for all of
us,” said the dog’s owner Kristen Butac. “We never would have thought this
would happen to us. He’s our family, so of course we’re going react the way we
did. We’re upset.”
Butac said three officers were
walking outside the house when Bruce lunged at them. The first two managed to
sidestep and avoid the dog, but the third officer fired a shot.
An HPD spokeswoman said the
officer described the dog as aggressive and vicious.
When asked how much was the dog
bleeding, Butac said “well, to us, it seemed like a lot. I mean, seeing
something like that, of course, you’re panicking. You don’t know what else
could have happened.”
She said the officers would not
let anyone leave the house, even as they pleaded to let someone take Bruce to
the vet. But they were told nobody leaves until the investigation is finished,
which took about an hour.
Investigators found the shell
casing, but they couldn’t find the bullet, which made the family even more
nervous, thinking that it could still be inside the dog’s chest.
“We didn’t know what other
injuries he had, so we were just trying our best to just put pressure on his wound,” Butac said.
After the family rushed Bruce
to an emergency care veterinarian, they did get some good news.
“The vet said he was a very
lucky dog. What happened was the bullet had entered and exited his chest. The
only damage was to his soft tissues.”
The family plans to file a
lawsuit against HPD. Investigators are reviewing the case to initiate some type
of policy.
