St Louis teenager killed by police was shot in the back.Update:STL pigs lies are starting to unravel
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http://www.kbzk.com/story/29898767/could-teen-have-run-with-severed-spine-after-being-shot-by-st-louis-policeCould teen have run with severed spine after being shot by St. Louis police?
By Sara Sidner CNN
(CNN) -- The St. Louis police shooting death of 18-year-old Mansur Ball-Bey sparked days of protests earlier this month, and now one searing question has risen to the forefront: How could Ball-Bey have run from police after his spinal cord was severed?
Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Michael Graham determined last week that Ball-Bey's spinal cord was severed after police shot him in the back, though that information was not released to the media at the time. Then, this week, Graham decided to reexamine part of the black teenager's body after seeing the police evidence in the case.
The medical examiner told CNN that he decided on his own to take a second look because of questions he had about the evidence and police statements that Ball-Bey ran after being shot in the back, relative to the condition of the body during his examination. The bullet also pierced Ball-Bey's heart, which was fatal, Graham said.
"It's a matter of the physical evidence as it's been preliminarily portrayed," Graham told CNN. "It made me question how could a body be in this place if this happened?"
After his second examination, Graham said his findings can't answer whether Ball-Bey could have run immediately after being shot in the back.
"At the time his body was found, I determined the spinal cord was severed," he said. "That is not necessarily the way it was immediately after he was shot.
"Potentially, the natural progression of the damage to the spinal cord could have been a delayed separation instead of instantaneous."
But the lawyer for Ball-Bey's family believes this all amounts to a "suspicious" reversal of what he says Graham told him last week:
"When I initially spoke to Dr. Graham, he indicated that Mansur -- after being shot -- would have gone down immediately or that his momentum may have carried him no more than five feet before he would collapse," said attorney Jermaine Wooten. "But when that narrative didn't line up with the police officer's narrative I feel we are dealing with a revisionist theory."
Family hires pathologist to review records
Police have said officers were serving a search warrant looking for drugs and guns in a St. Louis home when they noticed Ball-Bey and another person run out of the home's back door. They claimed Ball-Bey turned and pointed a handgun at them -- an account disputed by his family's attorney -- after which officers shot at him.
Investigators said Ball-Bey ran through the home and dropped the gun in the back yard after being shot. But he didn't stop moving, running through a gangway into the front yard before collapsing.
Wooten questions how Ball-Bey could have gotten all the way to the front yard if his spine had been severed.
But Graham, the medical examiner, told CNN that his findings can't answer that question definitively. He said that, in in this case, all the witness accounts and physical evidence will be paramount.
While Graham says another look at a small portion of the body is not all that rare, the family attorney says the reexamination of the body is another reason the family and community do not trust the police account.
The family contends that Mansur Bell-Bey was an innocent bystander. They claim he was not inside the home when police ran in to serve a warrant but was watching as the raid happened.
Wooten told CNN he has hired pathologist Cyril Wecht to examine autopsy records and photographs.
Wecht is no stranger to high-profile cases, and he criticized the third autopsy (performed by federal authorities) on Michael Brown. The death of the 18-year-old unarmed black teen at the hands of a white police officer -- who a grand jury found was justified in the shooting -- in Ferguson, Missouri, spurred large-scale protests and a national debate over race and policing.
CNN's attempts to obtain comment from police were not successful Thursday.
Police spokeswoman Schron Jackson sent a statement to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which first reported the development, saying, "There are multiple layers of this investigation and we support each agency involved as we work to determine the facts of what occurred on Wednesday, Aug. 19."
Chief Sam Dotson acknowledged last week that an autopsy revealed the teenager died after being shot in the back.
Dotson said then, "Just because he was shot in the back, doesn't mean he was running away" when he was shot.
The chief quickly added, "It could be. And I'm not saying that it doesn't mean that. I just don't know yet." -
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/08/29/us-usa-police-shooting-idUSKCN0QY0CK20150829Funeral for slain Missouri teen as family questions police shooting
Mourners were gathering on Saturday for the funeral of an 18-year-old black man whose shooting by a white police officer earlier this month re-ignited racial tensions in the St. Louis area.
The funeral for Mansur Ball-Bey comes 10 days after he was fatally shot in the back by a plainclothes police officer outside a home where police were serving a search warrant.
St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson said two officers fired at Ball-Bey after he and another African-American ran out of the back of a home being searched and Ball-Bey pointed a gun at them.
Dotson said Ball-Bey was struck by one of the bullets and then ran from the backyard to the front of the house.
He said police recovered the gun that Ball-Bey dropped. The gun had been stolen, Dotson said.
The shooting set off days of protests as Ball-Bey's family and some witnesses contradicted police accounts.
Questions mounted in recent days after the city's medical examiner said Ball-Bey's spinal cord was severed by the bullet, which may have limited his ability to run. The medical examiner said the bullet also struck Ball-Bey in the heart, which would have killed him immediately.
"Their story is not plausible," said Jerryl Christmas, a lawyer representing Ball-Bey's parents. "The police may have mistaken him for someone else when they shot. But he did not have a gun. He was not in that house."
A pathologist hired by the family will review the findings, Christmas said.
Ball-Bey had just gotten off work and was waiting for a relative to give him a ride outside a home near the one police were searching on Aug. 19, Christmas said.
When Ball-Bey and a 14-year-old friend saw plainclothes officers with guns, they became frightened and started to run, he said.
Christmas said witnesses, including the 14-year-old, say Ball-Bey was not in the house being searched and did not have a gun.
"Do I think police could have planted that gun? Yes I think that," Christmas said. "Whoever controls the crime scene controls the narrative."
He said the family will file a wrongful death lawsuit against the police department.
The department said it could not comment while the shooting is under investigation.
The killing came about a year after the police shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in nearby Ferguson, Missouri, ignited protests around the nation and a debate over police treatment of minorities. -
http://www.stlamerican.com/news/local_news/article_03d0de50-5179-11e5-b38f-c71d233c8868.html?mode=jqmAttorneys seek second medical opinion on severed spinal cord, Mansur Ball-Bey advocates question city medical examiner’s statements
By Chris King Of The St. Louis American | Updated 5 hours ago
The attorneys for the family of Mansur Ball-Bey have retained Dr. Cyril Wecht to review medical evidence on this case. They said they are presently waiting for Dr. Michael A. Graham, the City of St. Louis’ chief medical examiner, to complete his report so they can have Dr. Wecht review it.
They will also ask Dr. Wecht to review the injured part of the youth’s spinal cord, “which they still have at the medical examiner’s office,” said Jerome Wooten, who represents the Ball-Bey family along with Jerryl Christmas.
Ball-Bey, 18, was killed by two plainclothes St. Louis police officers while a search warrant was being served at a house in the Fountain Park neighborhood on August 19 in circumstances that are disputed.
The youth’s spinal cord is crucial – and the medical judgment of Dr. Graham possibly in need of a second opinion – because Dr. Graham revealed that the spinal cord had been severed on August 27, following a second autopsy. The medical examiner did not mention the severed spinal cord after the first autopsy, though he discovered it then.
The attorneys saw the body with Dr. Graham on August 23
“The plug where the bullet hit him in the back looked dead center, not to the right, like the police had said,” Christmas said. “At the time I thought maybe the skin had moved, and the injury was really to the right. But no, it was dead center.”
Dr. Graham told The American why he did not immediately discuss the severed spinal cord publicly: “Often you hold back information until all of the statements by witnesses are in because you don’t want to influence what witnesses say.”
Then why give media interviews and release only partial information?
“It’s a difficult line to walk, because you want to be open – especially the family deserves as many answers as you can give them – but you want to protect the integrity of investigation,” Dr. Graham said.
The attorneys said a severed spinal cord disproves the police narrative of the shooting, which has Ball-Bey running a long way after he was shot. Wooten said Dr. Wecht is needed to review the case, in part, because “Dr. Graham is backing up a bit” on his statements.
They pointed out Dr. Graham’s statement to media that perhaps the bullet nicked Ball-Bey’s spine and then it was the youth continuing to run that actually severed his spine – “a delayed separation instead of instantaneous,” as Dr. Graham said to CNN.
Like Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Ball-Bey could stand accused of in essence severing his own spine.
“Dr. Wecht said he had never heard of that scenario,” Christmas said. “Even Dr. Graham said he had never seen it. Then why speculate?”
“We are dealing with possibilities as to why there may be a discordance between physical evidence and witness statements,” Dr. Graham told The American. “It all should fit together. When it doesn’t all fit, you have to figure out why.”
Wooten speculated that Dr. Graham might be trying to help the police out of a “bind.”
“The medical evidence confirmed what witnesses said, and that put the police department and their version in a bind,” Wooten said. “It appears to be medically impossible for their story to factually make sense. Mansur could not have run more than three or five feet with a severed spinal cord.”
Dr. Graham said it was “ridiculous” to claim he would alter his medical findings to align with police statements.
Dr. Wecht, who also reviewed evidence in the VonDerrit Myers Jr. case, is a legend (or celebrity) in forensic science dating back to his argument that the medical evidence in the John F. Kennedy assassination was not consistent with the Warren Commission’s single bullet conclusion. -
http://www.businessinsider.com/r-family-of-black-st-louis-teen-fatally-shot-wants-answers-lawyer-2015-9Family of black St. Louis teen fatally shot wants answers: lawyer
(Reuters) - Relatives of a black male teenager whom St. Louis police fatally shot in the back more than three weeks ago still cannot get officials to release key details about the incident, their lawyer said on Friday.
The family of Mansur Ball-Bey has repeatedly asked for the identity of the two police officers who fired on the 18-year-old shortly before noon on Aug. 19, attorney Jerryl Christmas said.
The family also is seeking forensics information gathered from the gun that police say Ball-Bey pointed at officers, but the family believes was planted at the scene by police, he said.
"It is unusual," Christmas said. "I think they are trying to protect their officers."
St. Louis police spokeswoman Schron Jackson said the two officers involved were on administrative leave, but the department would not disclose their identities because the incident is still under investigation.
Details will be released after the conclusion of the investigation, and local and federal prosecutors have reviewed the findings, she said.
St. Louis and the nearby suburb of Ferguson have drawn more than a year of protests over police treatment of minorities after a white Ferguson officer fatally shot 18-year-old Michael Brown, an unarmed African-American, in August 2014. That and other fatal incidents ignited protests around the United States.
In the Ferguson incident, police waited six days before releasing the name of Darren Wilson as the officer who shot Brown, along with other information.
The delay was one factor that angered the community and fueled distrust of police, the U.S. Justice Department said in a report about the unrest that followed that shooting.
The Justice Department said law enforcement should release all information lawfully permitted as soon as possible unless there is a compelling reason not to, particularly when serious incidents involving police occur.
St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson has said Ball-Bey pointed a gun at two officers after he and another African-American ran out of the back of a home being searched. The officers then fired at Ball-Bey.
A coroner's report found that one bullet struck Ball-Bey in the back, severing his spinal cord and hitting his heart.
Police said they recovered a gun that Ball-Bey dropped and determined it had been stolen.
Christmas said the family needed to know the identities of the officers involved to establish whether they have a history of questionable conduct.
He said the family wanted the forensic information gathered from the gun that police say Ball-Bey threw because witnesses have said he did not have a gun before or when he was shot. -
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/st-louis-police-turn-over-report-on-police-shooting-of/article_78c8181b-b78b-532e-bbad-4b9f34a77184.htmlSt. Louis police turn over report on police shooting of Mansur Ball-Bey to prosecutor
ST. LOUIS • St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson said the department has turned over its investigation of a fatal 2015 police shooting of a St. Louis man to prosecutors for review.
The department did not publicly release the findings of its Force Investigative Unit in the Aug. 19, 2015, shooting of Mansur Ball-Bey.
“The Force Investigative Unit has worked diligently to ensure a thorough investigation of this case,” Dotson said in a statement about the completion of the unit's report. “All of their findings have now been turned over to the Circuit Attorney’s Office for an independent review. Once the Circuit Attorney’s Office has reviewed the findings and a decision rendered, all findings permissible under the Sunshine Law will be released to the public.”
Police have said that Ball-Bey, 18, ran out the back door of a home on the 1200 block of Walton Avenue around noon as officers were serving a search warrant seeking drugs and guns. Authorities said two officers fired when Ball-Bey pointed a handgun with an extended magazine at one of them.
Attorneys for Ball-Bey's family have disputed that account, and questioned the results of medical examinations of Ball-Bey's body. The shooting, coming about a year after the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson and exactly a year after the police shooting of Kajieme Powell in St. Louis, triggered protests.
The St. Louis Circuit Attorney's office launched its own review of the shooting running parallel to the police investigation, a move criticized by a police union official at the time.
http://www.circuitattorney.org/Article.aspx?ArticleID=820Circuit Attorney's Statement on Police Report Regarding Mansur Ball-Bey Shooting
April 18, 2016
Circuit Attorney to Review Police Findings in Mansur Ball-Bey Shooting Investigation
Circuit Attorney Jennifer M. Joyce has received the findings of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department's Force Investigative Unit (FIU) surrounding the shooting death of Mansur Ball-Bey by an officer last August. Police did not seek charges against the officers involved.
The investigation by police into the shooting comes at the same time prosecutors are completing an independent look into the events surrounding the death of Ball-Bey on August 19, 2015. The shooting happened on Walton Avenue in the Fountain Park neighborhood.
In an effort to expedite the release of information to the public, prosecutors began a parallel investigation into this matter immediately after the incident rather than waiting for the police to conclude their investigation. That is now a standard practice.
The Circuit Attorney's Office is currently reviewing two other police-involved shootings, both from earlier this year. -
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/st-louis-police-officers-won-t-be-prosecuted-in-ball/article_478d9914-b9cd-5f57-bbf5-698ca55ffe13.htmlSt. Louis police officers won't be prosecuted in Ball-Bey shooting in 2015
Updated at 3:45 p.m. with details from family news conference
ST. LOUIS • Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce announced Thursday that she will not file charges against two city police officers who fatally shot a man they said flourished a gun at them during a raid.
Her report says there is not sufficient evidence to support a charge, but does not take a position on whether they were justified to shoot.
Police said Mansur Ball-Bey, 18, ran out the back door of a home in the 1200 block of Walton Avenue about noon Aug. 19 and pointed a handgun with an extended ammunition magazine at police, who opened fire. Officials said Ball-Bey did not shoot.
It happened as police and agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives served a search warrant seeking guns and drugs.
One officer fired three shots and another fired once, officials said.
The incident occurred on the first anniversary of the controversial police shooting of Kajieme Powell in St. Louis and a little more than a year after a Ferguson officer fatally shot Michael Brown Jr., 18.
Joyce's announcement comes two weeks after she charged a former St. Louis officer, Jason Stockley, with murder in the killing of a man in 2011.
In April, the police Force Investigative Unit, which investigates shootings by officers, turned over its findings in Ball-Bey's death to Joyce's office, which conducted its separate inquiry.
In announcing her findings Thursday based on the FIU's report and her office's inquiry, Joyce said called the shooting "a tragedy" and said "I'm sorry for the pain that the Ball-Bey family is experiencing right now." Joyce said that with the evidence and witness accounts, she would not be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the officers did not ? in self-defense.
"One of the biggest challenges we face in this case is that there is no independent, credible witness we can put in front of a grand jury or regular jury contradicts police statements," Joyce said in a statement. "None of the other witnesses had a clear view at the moment when Ball-Bey was shot."
Ball-Bey was black. The officers who fired are white. Joyce did not identify the officers or any of the witnesses in her report but said one is 33, the other 29, and both graduated from the police academy in 2008. Meanwhile on Thursday, the police department identified them as Ronald Vaughn and Kyle Chandler, who fired the fatal shot.
Two versions of a shooting
Joyce said the investigation revealed that Ball-Bey was shot by one officer as Ball-Bey appeared to point a gun at a second officer.
But Joyce said two versions of the shooting emerged from accounts by five key witnesses. Those witnesses were the two officers who shot at Ball-Bey, an unidentified friend of Ball-Bey who was with him as at least 15 police and ATF agents tried to serve the search warrant, an off-duty police officer who was in a yard across the alley and a member of the ATF.
The two officers were only interviewed by police and refused through their lawyer to talk to prosecutors. Their lawyer, Brian Millikan, said Thursday, "We're relieved the inquiry is over. And it's the result we expected, but in today's highly politicized world, you just never know. This shooting, I'll agree with Jennifer Joyce, is a tragedy but was absolutely justified. (The officers) did what they had to do that day."
Ball-Bey's friend said he never went to Ball-Bey's flat but was recorded by police in an interview room telling his mother and lawyer that he skipped school that day because he and Ball-Bey planned to make a music video, Joyce's report says. Prosecutors later found Ball-Bey in previous music videos entitled "No Duckin We Buckin" and "Traffic-La4ss Diss" with another person named in the search warrant holding a weapon.
Ball-Bey, who worked at FedEx, has no criminal history in Missouri but photos found on his cellphone and YouTube videos show him wearing T-shirts naming a gang in St. Louis. Joyce said prosecutors found social media photos of Ball-Bey with a gun that appeared to match the loaded .40-caliber handgun found at the scene. Joyce said the gun had been reported stolen and that text messages on Ball-Bey's cellphone discuss a gun of the same make and model and make references to selling marijuana.
The friend told authorities he did not witness the shooting and gave conflicting statements about where he and Ball-Bey were before the shooting, Joyce said. In one interview, the friend said he and Ball-Bey were in an alley at the time; in another, he said they were in a gangway between two apartment buildings on the block. An ATF agent and the off-duty officer said they saw Ball-Bey and his friend run from the back door of the apartment.
"He's got a gun, he's got a gun!" The off-duty officer said he yelled to the officers who were chasing Bal-Bey. The off-duty officer also said he heard one of the officers say, "Police, stop!"
Ball-Bey's friend told police neither he nor Ball-Bey were armed while police said they saw Ball-Bey holding a gun. However, Joyce said, Ball-Bey's palm print was found on the magazine of a loaded gun witnesses said he tossed near an alley trash bin behind the apartment.
The two officers who shot at Ball-Bey told police they had no choice but to shoot when they saw Ball-Bey turn and point the gun toward one of them. One officer took cover behind a telephone pole at one end of the yard and said he thought Ball-Bey was about to shoot the other officer who was standing near a trash bin. Both officers said Ball-Bey's gun "flew out" of his hands after being shot.
The off-duty officer said he saw Ball-Bey running with a gun in his hand and his arm extended before the witness ducked behind a parked truck. The witness said he and could hear the shooting but could not see it but reported seeing Ball-Bey toss a gun near a trash bin afterward.
Two other .40-caliber guns were found at the scene but DNA and fingerprint samples taken from those guns were not a match to Ball-Bey, Joyce's report says. Police said initially that they found the presence of fingerprints and DNA on Ball-Bey's gun, but ultimately, forensic tests revealed no useable DNA. -
No independent witness
Dr. Michael Graham, the city medical examiner, has told the Post-Dispatch that an autopsy revealed Ball-Bey’s spine was severed. However, Graham said, Ball-Bey's spinal cord didn't sever immediately, suggesting he could still move after being shot. The finding surprised police because officers and witnesses said Ball-Bey was running after being shot.
According to Joyce's report, Graham concluded Ball-Bey died not from a severed spinal cord but from a bullet that punctured his heart but that his spine could have been severed either by the bullet, by movement while running, by kneeling on his back while handcuffing him or while his body was being transported or autopsied. Police have said Ball-Bey struggled there with officers as they tried to handcuff him.
One key finding in Joyce's conclusion: "…there were several factors in the execution of this search warrant that we believe need to be reviewed and addressed" by police department."
Joyce did not detail what factors she feels need to be examined but did say the two officers who shot at Ball-Bey and the ATF agent "mistakenly entered" the backyard of a nearby corner store instead of the back yard of Ball-Bey's flat because, according to the ATF agent, officers were told the target building was the first one on the corner.
"As the officer stood in the back yard of the store, they saw the door to (Ball-Bey's apartment building) open and Ball-Bey and another male run out the back door," Joyce wrote.
Also, Joyce said no officer conducted surveillance on the rear of Ball-Bey's building before serving the warrant despite being unfamiliar with the neighborhood.
Joyce's report said prosecutors interviewed more than two dozen people during its investigation and made multiple requests for people to come forward with information as well as tried to interview people interviewed by the press.
"No independent witness or the person who was with Ball-Bey claims to have seen the entirety of the incident," Joyce wrote.
Now that Joyce's office is finished with her review, Police Chief Sam Dotson says the department will conduct an additional review to discuss tactical lessons learned from the incident.
"We appreciate the community's patience as both our department and the Circuit Attorney's Office conducted thorough investigations into this incident," Dotson said in a statement. "I have pledged transparency to the citizens of St. Louis and will continue to uphold this promise.”
Calls for resignations
Todd El, leader of the Moorish Temple, spoke on behalf of Ball-Bey family, during an impromptu news conference on the steps of the courthouse Thursday.
He called for Joyce, Dotson and Graham to step down.
"There was enough evidence to bring charges against these officers," El said.
Ball Bey's mother was crying. Jermain Wooten and Jerryl Christmas said they are disappointed and said that Graham examined Ball-Bey's body a second time without the family's permission.
El said Ball-Bey's actions as described by prosecutors and police are, "Inconsistent with who he was as a person."
Wooten and Christma said they will have an independent forensic expert review Graham's work, and that the family believes police planted the gun on Ball-Bey.
Wooten said police were "fortunate" when they picked up a gun that looks similar to the one that prosecutors say Ball-Bey is seen with on social media postings.
Stl pigs get away w/ murder again.. SMDH... -
Just because he was shot in the back......
Doesn't necessarily mean he was actually "shot in the back."
Who you gonna believe? Us (the cops) or your better judgment, and lying eyes?
-Upholders of white supremacy, racist chief pig voice
