Dekalb police officers involved in wrong-house shooting
The husband was shot and injured and his wife feared she was next. Their dog was killed.
All by their local police officers who broke into their home without permission and started firing when the couple opened a door between their den and their kitchen.
And a year later, there’s been no explanation of how and why they barged into the innocent [white] couple’s home in search of a suspect described as a black.
Predictably, it’s going to have to be resolved in court.
The whole story comes via the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which quoted the couple’s lawyer, Mark Bullman, accusing the police officers of “trying to spin a story that would protect them, that would cover what they did.”
He’s already filed the family’s notice of a lawsuit.
It was a year ago when Chris McKinley and wife Leah were watching a movie. They hard a noise and went to check it.
The ACJ tells the story: “They slowly opened the door between the den and their kitchen, and saw three men standing in their home. ‘As I’m opening it, pow pow pow pow pow,’ said Chris McKinley, adding that he hadn’t even made it all the way into the kitchen when a bullet struck him. The McKinley family’s 10-year-old Boxer, Yanna, was killed by DeKalb County police in August 2015 after officers mistakenly entered their home.”
“I thought they just murdered (Chris), they’re going to come for me and they’re going to get my baby. And that’s all I could think about,” said Leah McKinley told the paper.
Police Chief James Conroy said he sympathizes, but he cannot comment because of the looming litigation.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation investigated, but isn’t talking.
It could end up before a grand jury, but almost certainly before a civil court jury considering damages.
An apology, an explanation, was what Leah McKinley told the AJC she’s looking for. “To at least force them into accountability if they’re not willing to admit they did anything wrong.”
Chris McKinley was shot in the leg and went through months of therapy. They couldn’t bear to remain in the home and have moved.
“I can’t turn it off. I see it all the time. I imagine it all the time; if I hear noises; if I’m at home by myself,” Leah McKinley told the AJC.
They charge that officers, after shooting Chris, never even tried to help, instead occupied with one of their own officers who also was hit by police shots.
The officers even wrote in their report that the injured officer was the victim and Chris was the “offender,” the report said.
Police have admitted they went to the wrong house after dispatchers told them to look for a suspicious person, a “50-year-old black man,” the newspaper said.
The description of the house vaguely was similar to the McKinleys.
The officers also claimed the McKinleys “burst out of a closed door.”
“Leah McKinley said DeKalb investigators kept trying to suggest her husband had a gun. He had no weapon,” the AJC said.
“We’re good people. I’m a teacher. I’m not doing anything wrong. And because they made a poor choice they’re going to try to blame us,” she charged.
from PropagandaGuard https://propagandaguard.wordpress.com/2016/08/13/cops-mum-1-year-after-shooting-homeowner-killing-dog/
from WordPress https://toddmsiebert.wordpress.com/2016/08/13/cops-mum-1-year-after-shooting-homeowner-killing-dog/
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