Shooting of teenager by police in NYC “not justified”
“I thought he had a gun,” the shaken cop said after mortally wounding Timothy Stansbury Jr.
“They keep killing us like we’re dogs out here,” <his grandmother> said. “Are we better off now than we were 200, 300 years ago?”
A 19-year-old high school student who intended to take a rooftop shortcut to a birthday party was shot and killed by a police officer early yesterday at the top of a dark stairwell leading to the roof of a Brooklyn housing project.
Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said the shooting appeared to be unjustified.
It is extraordinary, especially for the notoriously hardass NYPD, for a police comissioner, early on a shooting investigation, to say it was “unjustified”. However, given the facts of the case – the officers opened a door and point-blank shot the teenager – there is nothing else they can to say. Not if they don’t want seething streets and massive marches on City Hall, that is. And they may get that anyway.
“At this point, based on the facts we have gathered, there appears to be no justification for the shooting,” the commissioner said. “This is a tragic incident that compels us to take an in-depth look at our tactics and training, both for new and veteran officers.”
Tragic? Sounds like manslaughter to me, maybe even murder.
When the door opened, the shooting officer saw Stansbury coming toward him through the doorway and opened fire with his 9 mm Glock semiautomatic handgun, apparently without saying a word, Kelly said.
“I saw him in the hallway spitting up blood like syrup. He was getting a seizure, gasping for air. His tongue was hanging out. Blood everywhere,” said building resident Korey Reese, 19. “The cops were standing, watching, doing nothing.”