Darnell Wicker (Photo: Family of Darnell Wicker).
Darnell Wicker was pronounced dead around 2 a.m. from multiple shots to his torso, upper right extremity and lower extremities after police officers opened fire on him. The Jefferson County Coroner’s office in Louisville, KY admitted that they don’t know exactly how many times the 57-year-old man was shot.
Police officers Taylor Banks and Beau Gadegaard were responding to a domestic violence call when Wicker came outside holding a knife and a tree saw, according to WDRB.
“He came outside — he came out the door and was holding a knife in his hand, he started kind of swinging it around a little bit and he kind of came at us and so we shot,” an officer explains on the video.
Two women who witnessed the event tell a different story, however. Anita Jones, Wicker’s girlfriend and Denita Jones blame the police.
“They just ran up past him — around him — and just said, ‘Drop your weapon!’ Pow! Pow! Pow! Pow!” Anita Jones described police not waiting for Wicker to drop the items. “He had no chance to drop the weapon.”
“The officers jumped out, came around, pushed her out of the way,” said Denita Jones. “I was far enough over here that he ran beside me, pushed her out of the way, said, ‘Ma’am move!’ ran up, the other one went that way. ‘Put it down!’ Pop! Pop! Pop!”
The officers also didn’t perform any kind of first aid on Wicker and the EMTs arrived nine minutes after he was shot.
“I was the person who actually had called them, and I didn’t want that to actually happen,” Denita Jones said. “That was my thing. I just wanted the situation to be okay.”
Once again, you have cops shooting someone, and once again, you have cops who refuse to render aid, even the simple act of calling for an ambulance. This has happened time and time again. Michael Brown. Paul O’Neal. And so many more. Pretty much all the people shot by cops. This is a demonstration of ingrained callousness, the dehumanization of bigotry. Body cam footage is below the fold, and it is graphic, so all the warnings.
https://youtu.be/7tPen9xyp-U
Via Raw Story.
At this point, this is how that should be reported:
Police officers Taylor Banks and Beau Gadegaard were responding to a domestic violence call when Wicker came outside holding a knife and a tree saw, according to WDRB.
changes to:
WDRB reports: Police officers Taylor Banks and Beau Gadegaard allegedly were responding to a domestic violence call when they claim Wicker came outside holding a knife and a tree saw. Upon contacting “Ask the strategic genius” we asked the police why they shot a person who had both hands full of hand tools, and wondered why they didn’t manage their engagement distance effectively.”
Questions I would ask about the knife:
1) how big was it? was it a combat knife or a utility knife?
2) which hand was it in?
Questions I would ask about the saw:
1) was it a 2-handed ninja vorpal saw, or a short saw?
2) how many cops have been sawed in the line of duty?
Marcus:
Snorting tea is not fun.
It is good that the cops did not turn off their body cameras during this incident, but if that angle is the best that body cams are going to show, it is practically worthless (except for the audio). Is the aim at the ground three feet in front of the officer done on purpose? Body cams should be configured so that the camera “sees” what the officer sees so that his actions can be judged fairly (when I say “fairly”, I mean in relation to the victims of police violence).
As far as the audio, it sounds like the officers fired at the victim almost as soon as he appeared. They did not give him a chance to drop the weapons before shooting.