Police Video Shows Fatal Shooting Of Six-Year-Old

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Louisiana police have released body camera footage from 2015 showing two officers opening fire on an S.U.V. striking and killing a 6-year-old boy and critically wounding his father who was unarmed.

Footage of a Louisiana police chase that ended with the fatal shooting of a 6-year-old autistic boy was released at the pre-trial hearing of two officers charged with his death.

The head of the Louisiana State Police said the video was the most disturbing thing he’s seen.

Warning: Graphic Content

New York Post reports:

Nearly a year later, the public is getting its first look at the graphic footage.

The state judge presiding over the murder cases against the two deputies allowed reporters to make copies of the tape Wednesday after a hearing where it was formally introduced as evidence.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys previously described in writing how the footage depicts the shooting, which occurs less than a minute into the video. The rest of the nearly 14 minutes of footage shows the stomach-churning aftermath, as the officer with the body camera checks on the lifeless body of Jeremy Mardis while his critically wounded father, Christopher Few, lies bleeding on the pavement.

Prosecutors showed the tape in court Wednesday to support their claim that one of the deputies, Derrick Stafford, had a pattern of using excessive force — including last November’s fatal shooting of Jeremy in Marksville.

Matthew Derbes, a prosecutor from Attorney General Jeff Landry’s office, said Stafford’s pattern of hurting people he’s arresting also provides a motive for shooting at Few while his hands are raised.

Motive is something the jury wants to hear,” Derbes said. “Why would they do this?”

Defense attorneys for Stafford and Norris Greenhouse Jr. argue the deputies acted in self-defense. They claim Few drove recklessly while leading officers on a two-mile chase and then rammed into Greenhouse’s vehicle as he was exiting it, before he and Stafford opened fire.

“Christopher Few was a suspect before they knew that child was in the car,” said Christopher LaCour, one of Stafford’s attorneys.

While the video doesn’t capture the entire pursuit, state District Court Judge William Bennett noted that the footage doesn’t show Few’s car posing a threat to the officers as they fired.

“That car was not being used as a deadly weapon at that time,” Bennett said. “I daresay it was not even close to being used as a deadly weapon at that time.”

The video from the body camera worn by Marksville police Sgt. Kenneth Parnell III lacks audio for the first 27 seconds. The deputies began shooting before the audio begins.

Prosecutors say the video shows the deputies firing from a safe distance from Few’s car. Stafford’s attorneys, however, argue the 27-second-long segment without audio makes it impossible to determine if he started shooting before or after Few raised his hands inside the car.

After the shooting and sirens stop, somebody yells at Few to show his hands. Few is slumped over the bloodstained door on the driver’s side of his car when officers approach him.

“Is he hit at all?” Stafford later asked Parnell.

“Who?” Parnell replied.

“The driver,” Stafford said

“Yeah,” Parnell responded.

“I never saw a kid in the car, man,” Stafford said. “I never saw a kid, bro.”

About seven minutes after the shooting, Parnell opened the passenger door to Few’s car, shone a flashlight onto Jeremy, nudged his right shoulder and checked for a pulse. Then he walked over to another officer and said he found a faint pulse on the boy.

Donning surgical gloves, Parnell walked back to the boy’s side of the car and shone a light on the boy again.

“Oh, my God,” he muttered.

Several minutes later, a paramedic told Parnell the boy was dead.

Defense attorneys have suggested investigators rushed to judgment. George Higgins, one of Greenhouse’s attorneys, said investigators have no evidence that any of the bullets fired by Greenhouse struck Few or his son.

Higgins asked State Police detective Rodney Owens during Wednesday’s hearing why the deputies were arrested before obtaining results of ballistics tests.

“You didn’t know that Mr. Greenhouse did not shoot anybody when you arrested him?” Higgins said.

Owens acknowledged that he didn’t. But investigators later traced 14 shell casings to Stafford’s semi-automatic handgun and determined four other shell casings recovered at the scene came from Greenhouse’s gun. Of the four bullet fragments recovered from the boy’s body, three matched Stafford’s weapon and another couldn’t be matched to either deputy.

Owens also testified that there isn’t any physical evidence that Few’s car collided with Greenhouse’s vehicle, but he couldn’t rule that out as a possibility.

Stafford and Greenhouse await separate trials on second-degree murder and attempted second-degree murder charges.

Stafford, a Marksville police lieutenant, and Greenhouse, a former Marksville police officer, were moonlighting as deputy marshals on the night of the Nov. 3, 2015, shooting.

Stafford’s trial is scheduled to start Nov. 28; Greenhouse has a March 13, 2017, trial date. Bennett refused Wednesday to consolidate the cases for a single trial.

State Police Col. Mike Edmonson cited the video when he announced the arrest of the two officers on Nov. 6.

video
Orange maks the spot where the 6 year-old was killed

4 Comments

  1. It has been police department practice throughout the US to send police for training in Israel. Militarized American police return with a shoot first ask questions if they survive, later. It is abundantly clear that when an officer empties his clip of 17 rounds into a perp,  there’s probably not going to be any need for questioning, and definitely no dispute as to their story of what took place. When you give any policing organization Carter blanche to kill with total impunity,  murdering a perp is the easiest way to resolve the issue. Look at our military? How many millions have been slaughtered, called,(collateral damage) by a bunch of Gung how GI Joe’s? I call what’s happening to the american public,  the PALESTENIZATION of Americans? We have become the enemy, the terrorists, the target?

  2. Wheres the white lives matter riots?  Oh…never mind; whites are civilized!  Maybe they will show this on White Entertainment TV…. never mind… Only blacks get a racial TV, magazines, charities, etc!  And blacks call whites racist but they are the ones constantly playing the race card and race baiting every other race with their knock out games and kill white people speech!  Its only a hate crime if whites say kill blacks, its free speech if blacks say kill whites!  Double standard America is doomed!

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