UPDATE: The original October 22 post is below. Here’s the latest from the NYT:
Mr. Cox added that he never saw a police cruiser behind Mr. Henry’s car and did not hear an air horn go off. Mr. Cox said that the officer seemed to be signaling with his hand for them to move forward. Mr. Henry shifted the car into gear and pulled out of the fire lane, moving at “regular parking lot speed,” Mr. Cox said. There were three police cars parked in a row to their left.
“As we come out of the curve and head to the straightaway, an officer came out from in between two cruisers with his gun drawn and pointed at us,” he recalled. Mr. Cox said that as the car slowed slightly, he heard a gunshot and the sound of breaking glass. He said that the officer never signaled for the car to stop before firing. Mr. Cox said he put his head down and leaned into his door to try to avoid being hit.
“After the first shot sounds, I feel the car hit something, but I couldn’t see what it had struck at that moment,” he said. “But then, out of my left eye, I could see him on the hood, and he was firing. I saw the gun up to the windshield.” At one point, Mr. Cox, who is being represented by Charles J. Ogletree Jr., said he felt a bullet strike him in his left arm.
Mr. Hinds, who was in the back seat, said on Friday that from his vantage point, he had seen the officer jump “in front of the car at the last minute.” Once the officer was on the hood, Mr. Hinds recalled, three bullets came through the windshield. George Prepis, 20, a former Pace student who had attended homecoming and said that he had witnessed the shooting, said in an interview that it had appeared Officer Hess already had his gun in hand and then had thrown himself onto the hood.
Mr. Prepis said that as the Nissan moved out of the fire lane, he had seen the officer standing near the middle of the road, to the side of the car’s path, with a gun in his right hand down by his leg. He said that the officer was signaling with his left arm for Mr. Henry to stop.
“He then stepped in front of the car and jumped on the hood and started shooting,” Mr. Prepis said. “It was not like he got hit.” After the Nissan stopped, Mr. Cox remembered, Mr. Henry had said: “They shot me. They shot me. I can’t believe they shot me.”
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As soon as I heard this story, something didn’t sound right. I’m not surprised that questions are now being raised:
The New York-based lawyer representing the family of Danroy “D.J.’’ Henry Jr. said he plans to file a request today in State Supreme Court in White Plains, N.Y., to preserve all the evidence relevant to the Easton native’s death, including surveillance tapes from businesses and police vehicles, 911 tapes, and ambulance response times.
Henry, 20, a member of the Pace University football team, was shot and killed early Sunday by police during a disturbance outside Finnegan’s Grill in the Town Center shopping center in Thornwood, an unincorporated hamlet of Mount Pleasant, N.Y.
Police officers said he failed to stop at their request and hit two officers with his vehicle, propelling one onto the hood. The officer on the hood and another one on the ground fired into the car, killing Henry and wounding one of his two passengers.
But witnesses, including Henry’s best friend, who was the passenger in the car that was wounded, said Henry, a junior, was simply trying to move his car from a fire lane after an officer tapped on his window and indicated for him to move.
Here’s a troubling Fox News report on the killing:
The post What really happened to Danroy Henry? [Updated] appeared first on Peter Daou.
