The incident I'm referencing is about a young man in Ohio who was shot down in a (where else) WALMART for holding a toy gun .
Update September 25, 2014:
Federal investigators to review Ohio Walmart shooting Let's hope they come up with a different outcome.
Here's the story from Daily Kos
Stunning news out of Ohio. Special prosecutor Mark Piepmeier has announced that after three days of grand jury testimony, there will be no indictments in the shooting death of John Crawford III, which took place inside an Ohio Walmart in August.
Video taken from Walmart surveillance cameras were released at the press conference and they still don't seem to tell the whole story. I SEE THE WHOLE STORY!!! THIS MAN WAS JUST PLAYING WITH A TOY, DAMMIT! WATCH THIS VIDEO, NO PEOPLE WERE THREATENED!!!!
Based on the video they released, Crawford does not appear to be pointing the air rifle at anyone. Ronald Ritchie was the 911 caller who alerted police and claimed: Ronald Ritchie said Crawford "was just waving [the gun] at children and people...I couldn't hear anything that he was saying. I'm thinking that he is either going to rob the place or he's there to shoot somebody. Just how does Mr. Ritchie know this? Here's more from the scared eye witness: "He didn't really want to be looked at and when people did look at him, he was pointing the gun at them. He was pointing at people. Children walking by," Ugh Mr. Ritchie, you have been playing too many obscenely horrific games when you look at a lone man in a toy aisle in Walmart and think he was going to go on a mass shooting spree. Update 9/29/14: Ritchie changes his story and could possibly charged with manslaughter>
1 comment:
In the video I saw the day of the grand jury announcement, you could see the cops coming in at the bottom left of the screen. Wondering then if this video has been altered. The cops came down a main aisle from the left and so only saw him for a second, and at that same time Crawford was swinging the gun upward. Thus pointing it down the back aisle, where people could have been. Tragic, but a series of dumb actions by Mr. Crawford put him in a bad situation, and unfortunately he is dead.
Now, right off the bat, I thought "what about this caller?" He is supposedly a former Marine, so I would hope he has some knowledge about guns. He wanted to be the hero, but only by dialing 911 and then waiting. And not doing anything for the next 3 minutes or so when Mr. Crawford could have done something dangerous to someone if he really had intentions to do so.
And let's not blame the officers. They were following their training and going on the report they had. Now, with today's technology, surely the 911 caller could be patched directly into the responding officers. It seems the exact info from the caller did not get relayed to the officers. But if they could have been talking live, Mr. Crawford would probably still be alive.
A series of unfortunate events, but we don't need Al Sharpton coming to Dayton to stir things up. Review the video and the 911 recordings, and maybe something against the caller. But Walmart nor the police officers had any intent to harm Mr. Crawford or negligence in his death.
Post a Comment