Another mass killing in America.

• 

"May God be w/ the people of Sutherland Springs, Texas. The FBI & law enforcement are on the scene. I am monitoring the situation from Japan," Trump tweeted shortly after reports of the incident."

Sorry Mr. trump, "God" didn't help those dead people (twenty six by the latest count) in Sutherland Springs, Texas. They were in church , if God couldn't help them there, it's a safe bet that they are pretty much out of luck.

But you know what might be able to help the next poor victims of gun violence? More sensible gun laws. We say it every time there is one of these mass shootings in America, and we are
starting to sound like one big broken record, but until politricksters show the political will to
stand up to the NRA and the gun crazies in this country, there will be more to come.

A few days ago a terrorist killed eight people in New York with a car, and Mr. trump and his minions were calling for Muslim bans and extreme vetting of people who come to this country. He couldn't wait to get political after that act of terrorism. Now we will hear that we shouldn't be politicizing this latest tragedy, because it's time for mourning and praying to "God" for the families. I think it's safe to say that just praying to God is not enough. What we need  is real action along with getting our collective heads out of our asses.

I know that the technical definition of  terrorism is that when terror or fear is spread to achieve a political, religious or ideological goal, but try telling that to those people in that church today. I am sure that those poor survivors were terrified. So are the hardworking people in some of these crime ridden neighborhoods in large urban spaces like Philly. These people have to deal with little urban terrorist killing each other over turf and money on a daily basis. Terrorism takes many forms. and these politicians like the president should stop treating it differently depending on whether it suits their political agenda.

"A young man standing outside the hospital, his head bandaged and his right arm taped from where an IV had been put in, said he had been wounded in the shooting and that this father had been killed.
His mother was in another hospital. He declined to talk but expressed faith that they would pull through with God's help."

Sorry young man, I think God wants us to fix this ourselves. 

*Pic from startribune.com





   

The sad tale of Jeffrey Lee Wood.

  Sometimes I really have to wonder what is going on in the state of Texas.

“'I had a nightmare about my dad last night,” Paige Rowan told her aunt in the text.

Rowan described a dream in which she watched helplessly as the execution needle pierced her father’s skin.

She woke up screaming, panicking and feeling hopeless, she told Been.

Then, she said, she dropped to her knees and prayed.

“Please don’t allow this to happen,” Rowan wrote. “Don’t take my father away.”

Been struggled to finish reading the text message, her voice breaking as she paused several times to regain her composure during an interview with The Washington Post.

The message was sent Sunday, Been said, less than three weeks ahead of the date her niece has come to dread: Aug. 24, when the Texas Department of Criminal Justice plans to inject Jeffrey Lee Wood with a lethal dose of pentobarbital to stop his heart.

Rowan’s nightmares have been happening more often as her father’s execution date looms closer.

It is so close now that she can feel it, Rowan told her aunt.

The scheduled execution is Wood’s punishment for the 1996 death of a man he did not kill — and, by some accounts, did not know was going to be killed.

Legal experts say his case is rare, even in Texas, the execution capital of America — and a state that allows capital punishment for people who did not kill anyone or did not intend to kill.

Wood was convicted and sentenced to death under what’s called the law of parties, which has been in effect in Texas since the 1970s. It states that a person who “solicits, encourages, directs, aids, or attempts to aid the other person to commit an offense” is also criminally liable for that offense.

Under the law, prosecutors are not required to prove that a defendant had any part in committing a crime, or even intended to commit it. Jurors only need to find that there was a plan to commit a crime and that the defendant should have anticipated that the crime would occur.

In Wood’s case, he was sitting in a pickup outside a Texaco convenience store in Kerrville, Tex., in January 1996, when Daniel Reneau went inside and shot and killed the store clerk with a .22-caliber handgun.

Wood’s supporters say he was under the impression that Reneau, a drifter he had met months earlier, was only going to buy food and drinks.

But they also agree that Wood is not completely innocent.

Court records say he was involved in a scheme with Reneau and the store’s assistant manager to steal a safe that they believed contained thousands of dollars. While the others had backed out, Reneau took it upon himself to steal the safe, court records say.

Based on testimony from Wood’s then-girlfriend, he asked Reneau to not bring his gun before the two drove to the convenience store that day. Reneau did anyway, without Wood’s knowledge.

Wood’s attorney, Jared Tyler, said his client could not have anticipated the death of the clerk, Kris Keeran, and was unfairly held responsible for Reneau’s actions and decisions.

Both men were convicted of capital murder. Reneau was put to death in 2002.

Wood has been on death row since 1998, when his daughter, Paige Rowan, was a toddler.

If executed this month, Wood will be the “least culpable person executed in the modern era of death penalty,” said Scott Cobb, president of Texas Moratorium Network, a group that advocates against capital punishment.

Tyler has filed a writ of habeas corpus — used to review the legality of someone’s imprisonment — asking the state’s highest court for a new sentencing hearing for Wood, saying punishment should be proportional to culpability.

Wood’s death sentence, Tyler said, was based on “false and misleading” testimony from a psychiatrist who did not personally examine his client.

Bruce Curry, the Kerr County district attorney whose office prosecuted Wood’s case, said he could not comment because of the pending court decision. A spokeswoman for the Texas Attorney General’s Office, which is handling the case, also declined to comment.

Tyler is ultimately asking the court to declare the state’s death penalty unconstitutional “because of its arbitrariness and inability to ensure that only the worst of the worst receive death sentence,” according to court records.

That raises a question for Terri Been: How is her brother, a man without a violent criminal history, the worst of the worst?

A child in a man’s body

At the age of 12, Wood was described as a “highly impulsive” and “very troubled” youngster who often had negative opinions of himself.

When he was 15, he frequently asked how he was doing at school, often assuming he’d flunked, according to the writ of habeas corpus.

By the time he reached high school, he was spelling at a fourth-grade level and reading at a fifth-grade level. He has borderline mental disability with an IQ of 80.

His mother described him as an “eight-year-old in a man’s body.”

These “debilitating emotional and intellectual impairments” made Wood vulnerable to Reneau’s manipulation and rendered him unable to comprehend what Reneau was capable of doing, court records say. Because of those impairments, his attorney argued, Wood should have been declared incompetent to stand trial.

And he was — at least initially.

Wood was committed to a mental health hospital after he was found incompetent. A neuropsychologist had testified that Wood was delusional, unable to grasp the issues about his case and the reality facing him.

But Wood was released after 15 days in the hospital. Court records say the hospital tested his factual understanding of legal proceedings, but not his ability to be rational." [Read more] 

Do you think the action being taken by the state of Texas serves our best interest as a society?

I don't. Their "law of the parties" seems more like a law created by idiots to me.

*Pic from nytimes.com

 

TGIF, but not for all the news it brings.

This has been quite a news day.

There was another terrorist attack in Europe. This time it was in  Germany , where some nut-job decided to kill at least nine people (including children) before killing himself. (That might just eliminate the radical Muslim jihadist angle.)

Dude was yelling  "you fucking Turks", and his rampage comes on the anniversary of a white supremacist shooting and killing 77 people in Norway. (77!!)  

If it does turn out that this was some nationalist nut job acting alone,  and not the work of a Middle Eastern terrorist group, look for the coverage to change.

Whoever it is, it won't stop  Donald trump from using this as just another reason to ramp up the fear factor. (Is he still giving his address?) The world is going to hell in a hand- basket and only I alone can fix it.

And will someone please tell the folks in the republican party that optics matter? Retweeting something posted on a white supremacist website on your convention jumbotron in the middle of your nominee's speech, was not a good look. The white only elevator signs we can live with, because we understand that it might have been an oversight. (Might.) But at some point you have to start wondering about the motivations of these folks.   

Hilary also picked her running -mate today. I guess if you want safe and steady Tim Kaine is the way to go. Virginia would be a nice feather in Hillary's electoral college cap, although with the latest ruling from the supreme court in Virginia it won't be that easy.

Finally, the most troubling news of the day comes from Austin, Texas. Where some police officers in that department decided that it was cool to dehumanize and abuse a woman of color.

Her name is Breaion King; she is a school teacher, and what happened to her should sicken every person of conscience in this country.

Watch the video tape, and listen to what they say about black people.

"First and foremost, let me just say this to Breaion King, her family, her friends, her neighbors, her supporters: 'I’m sorry that on the day that you were stopped for going 15 mph [above the speed limit], you were approached in a manner and then treated in a manner that is not consistent with the expectations of this police chief," Acevedo said. "There’s a way to do this job, and that day, we did not approach it anywhere near the way we should’ve approached it."

Acevedo said that "the chain of command" who reviewed Richter's use of force in the incident determined that "the incident was not consistent with the expectations of the department." Richter was told to attend training and counseling. "

 

Chief, all the counseling in the world will not help that man and you know it.

 

Ms. King, I am just glad that you are still alive.  We all know that things could have turned out a lot

worse for you and your family.

 

*Pic from abcnews.go.com

 

 

Depraved killers or suffering from mental issues?

What is up with folks taking out their own family members, lately? And to hear some folks tell it it's not the type of people you would suspect of doing such things.

Let's start with "All American" looking Christy Sheats. All she did was....well here, I will just to a cut and paste job and let the article speak for itself.

" On Friday,  police in Texas responded to a home in the small town of Katy, where they found the bodies of two young women lying in the street.

According to investigators, the two victims – Taylor Sheats, 22, and Madison Sheats, 17 – were killed by their own mother, 42-year-old Christy Sheats, who was fatally shot by a responding officer.

Authorities allege Sheats started shooting her daughters inside the home, and continued firing bullets at them as they fled. Sheats was killed by police after refusing to drop her weapon during a brief standoff. Investigators have not released a motive, but they say the violence was preceded by a verbal argument between the three.

Here are five things to know about Friday’s fatal shooting in Katy, Texas:

Police tell PEOPLE they had been called to the Sheats home prior to Friday’s violence, and that the killer mother allegedly had a history of mental illness.

The Fort Bend County Sheriff’s Office had been to Sheats’s home “for previous altercations” involving her “mental crisis,” a sheriff’s spokeswoman tells PEOPLE, declining to elaborate on those incidents. " [Source]

There it is: "mental crisis", because someone like Christy Sheats couldn't just be a vicious depraved killer. (Kind of reminds me of another Texas woman who killed five of her children by drowning them one by one and was found to be insane by a jury of her peers.) That's for poor people living in inner city, America. Unfortunately they don't have the luxury of being able to go to therapy and be clinically diagnosed as mentally ill. They don't get prescribed drugs to treat whatever type of mental issues they may be suffering from.

We will soon be hearing that Grayden Denham has mental issues as well, and that what he did was not really his fault.

"PLATTE CITY, Mo.— A 25-year-old Missouri man was charged Monday with four counts of first-degree murder in the February deaths of four family members whose bodies were found outside a home he shared with them, including a 3-month-old nephew.

The charges against Grayden Denham were the result of a grand jury indictment handed down Friday, Platte County Prosecuting Attorney Eric Zahnd said at a news conference. Denham is also charged with four counts of armed criminal action, and one count each of animal abuse, second-degree arson, tampering with evidence and stealing a motor vehicle. He is being held on $4 million cash-only bond.

Denham was found walking naked in northern Arizona on Feb. 21, two days after the bodies of his grandparents, sister and her infant son were found near Edgerton, 30 miles north of Kansas City. Denham was returned to Missouri earlier this month after being held in Arizona on suspicion of theft and displaying a fictitious license plate.

Zahnd said it would be at least a month before he decides whether to seek the death penalty against Denham.

"This is a devastating thing to happen to a family and happen to a community. Our goal has been and will continue to be to do justice for everyone involved in this case," he said.

Missouri investigators had considered him a "person of interest" in the quadruple homicide but had been held only on a theft charge accusing him of stealing his grandparents' car to drive to Arizona.
Denham's attorney, John P. O'Connor, declined to comment Monday other than to say his client would plead not guilty.

Authorities found the body of Russell Denham, 82, was found near a small shed, while the bodies of Shirley Denham, 81; Heather Ager, 31; and her son, Mason Schiavoni, were found near the home, which also had been set on fire. A dog also was killed and burned. All four victims had been shot in the head, and a gas container was found near a body." [Source]

He was found "walking naked".

Let the insanity talk begin.   





 



   



   

"Don't mess with Texas."

Think about this for a minute: Some members of the Texas republican party have tabled a resolution to vote on whether Texas should secede from the United States at their upcoming state convention.

I know. Sounds crazy, right? But this is where we are now as a country.

I could write a voluminous post about this, but I am just going to cut and paste from the comments section from TPM to make my point..

"bkmn
       
Please do and don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. Ever since Texas has become a state that takes more federal money than they pay in under Rick Perry, I see no need to keep them in the union. They won't like the closure of all those military bases either.

arc_​of_​the_​universe
       
I'm for Texas rejoining Mexico.

fargo​116
       
Can the rest of the states pass a resolution saying "Good riddance."

dommyluc

Yes, please secede. Give up your military bases, U.S. government services, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid (hey, all residents of Texas will be foreigners - we don't have to pay them shit), etc. Try signing a treaty with any nation when you can be blockaded by the U.S. Navy. Yes, please go totally John Galt and pay for your own shit, and see how happy your Teabagger residents are when they finally realize that Baby Jesus ain't gonna pay to pave their roads and their goddamned cable bills. And have fun protecting yourself from Mexico. Can't wait to see the fence you build to protect yourselves when YOU have to pay for it. I would love to see Mexico reclaim its former territory, while Washington, D.C. rocks with laughter. Se habla espanol, motherfuckers?
If they do debate secession, I personally think they should be banned from participating in the 2016 election. That is a treasonous act, plain and simple. Secession is sedition.

wagonmound        

    

What can I say. Texas + Republicans = Assholes.

cwazycajun                  

I wish they wouldn't do that to me..getting my hopes up like that.... only to dash them .. \

frankly_my_dear           

                       

Let them go. Then we can build a wall around the place. I'm sure the citizens of New Mexico would build their part for free. Among the benefits of letting Texas secede is that the Dallas Cowboys will never play in another Super Bowl. They probably won't anyway, but it never hurts to make sure.

swirlystar      

                        

Ok, but I'll miss Austin...

sysprog      

                         

Perfect, just fking perfect. GO! Run! Do NOT come back when you don't get all 'your free stuff' that you blame on those pesky liberals. GO!" [Source]

Ok, so not everyone loves Texas, but jokes aside, isn't it dangerous that members of a major political party are even considering breaking up the union?  These are the same types of people who have no problem with Donald trump being our president. The same Donald trump who pushed the narrative that the twice elected president by the majority of the people was not even born here.

Just wait until the look at the twenty dollar bill and see a black woman

If Texas does end up seceding, maybe they will elect Donald trump to be their next president. That is, of course, if he isn't elected to be the president of the rest of the 49 states.

*Pic from chron.com



 

 

 

               

      

Polite profiling.

A few years back I was driving with my wife from the Baton Rouge, Louisiana airport to visit her folks for the Thanksgiving holidays. We were heading up highway 190 towards St. Landry Parish in a rental with out of state plates, when, wouldn't you know it, we got pulled over by a local sheriff outside of a little town called Livonia.

Me: Furious. Wife: Eh.

"Howdy folks, you were speeding a little bit there. License and registration, please?"

Me: More furious. Wife: Smiling.

"Sure officer, we just rented this car. We are on my way to see my family in Opelousas." Wifey takes over because I was still furious and Wifey wants her husband home for the holidays, and not in some Louisiana jail cell.

The sheriff, still smiling, and still very polite, started relaxing. I could literally see the change coming over him as he started bonding with my wife.

"Oh,  are you from around these parts?" My wife's accent started changing. "Yep , born and raised; went to Lawtell High and LSU. Going home for some good Louisiana fried turkey." It was on now. "Oh a Tiger gal, huh? Well welcome home. Where yawl traveling from? He was looking at me now sensing that I was the outsider. "Philadelphia". My wife jumped in again. "He took me away from home, I am not sure if I have forgiven him yet." They both started laughing at the same time. "Well you enjoy the fried turkey and the rest of your folk's cooking." He hardly looked at my driver's license or the papers for the rental. I could have given him a card with Donald Duck on it and he wouldn't have noticed. Then he must have remembered to give us a reason for stopping us: "Oh, and you all be careful, we want you to get home to your folks in one piece."  No ticket just a warning from the very nice sheriff. Forget the fact that I wasn't speeding any more than the rest of the cars in the flow of traffic that we were in.

Of course I know why he stopped us.  We had out of state plates on the rental, and we were...well... you know.

Me: You know we were profiled , right?  Wife: Yeah maybe, but he was so nice. 

I thought of that experience as I read about a case of racial profiling of a college professor in Dallas, Texas.

The sister believes she was profiled for walking while black and she wrote about her experience in the Dallas newspaper.

Well, as it turns out, there were cameras rolling on the patrol car dash-cam and  the police chief of the town  (Corinth, Texas) is now chirping that her officers have been vindicated because they were so... polite.

Please watch the video in the link  that I provided and you will see that the police officers were in fact very polite.

But here is the thing that I want my friends in the majority population to understand about this racial profiling thing: If you are stopping a black person just because they are black (I don't care how polite you are being) and you would have just passed a white person in a similar situation with a friendly waive, you are profiling them. It's really that simple. "Color aroused" racialist can be some of the most polite people on earth.

So yes, I agree with the professor, it's pretty messed up that you can't go on a jog in your neighborhood without two police officers approaching you in a marked police car to basically tell you to watch where you walk in the street.

“'When I saw the video, those officers were nothing but professional,” she said. “[The incident] just didn’t lend itself to racial profiling.

“If we didn’t have the video, these officers would have serious allegations against them," Walthall added. "It would be their word against hers. Every white officer that stops an African-American does not constitute racial profiling.”'

You are right about that chief, but every white police officer who stops a black person just because they happen to be black, is profiling. I don't care how damn polite they are.  

"The officers ask Bland for her ID, which she did not have but she gave her name and date of birth after insisting that she take the officers’ picture “for safety’s sake.” The policemen obliged her request.

Walthall said the officers were correct to ask for identification because Bland had committed a Class C misdemeanor by impeding traffic."

Yes, like I was speeding that day in Livonia, Louisiana.


*Pic from laprogressive.com


 

Let's just give thanks to Jericho and Brandon.

I was thinking of going to Dallas to watch my Birds play the Cowgals in November, but given all that has been happening in that state, I think that I might have to change my plans.

"Hot on the heels of a cell phone video that got at least one McKinney, Texas officer put on leave over use of improper force, a new video shows Austin police officers tackling an African-American man in the middle of the street, then pepper spraying someone who was filming it.

The incident happened Saturday night on Austin’s admittedly reprobate Sixth Street. In video captured by Los Angeles visitor Jericho Tucker, a horseback cop snatches another man’s cell phone, just before a second officer pepper sprays him.

According to the Austin-American Statesman the department “is aware of this incident and is conducting a review to determine if the officers’ conduct is compliant with our policy.”'
 [Watch video]

You gotta love those cell phone cameras.

Just imagine all the stuff that went on before they became a staple in our day to day lives.

This latest incident in McKinney just proves how far some of these police departments have to go.
Only someone who has their head in the sand can't see that there are clearly some issues with folks like Eric Casebolt. I suspect that he is the kind of guy that stays up at night, trolls websites, and calls black folks all kinds of n- words while hiding behind the anonymity that the Internet provides.

"Attorney Pete Schulte, who previously served as an officer in the McKinney PD, spoke to Fox 4 News about the video’s indications of racial tension. “McKinney police have got to get this under control before tomorrow,” Schulte stated. “They got to get out there in front of this and make sure that citizens, even outside of the city of McKinney, understand that they’re going to do the right thing and take corrective action and that this was not racially motivated.”

Schulte also discussed Casebolt’s treatment of 15-year-old Dajerria Becton, saying it was “crazy” of him to react to the situation as he did. “I don’t care what she was yelling at that officer,” said Schulte. “Anything would not have justified throwing her to the ground and pushing her down and throwing her face into the concrete like he did.” He also stated that the suggested racism was especially present in the video since officers were not shown confronting any of the white party attendees.

“There is an indication based on watching the video that the white people who were around the officers weren’t talked to, they weren’t pushed away, they weren’t told to get on the ground, they weren’t put in handcuffs. The only individuals McKinney police were doing that to were those that were African-American.”

Casebolt has been suspended since the incident, though the department has received calls since then asking for him to be fired. In a separate interview with ABC News 8, Schulte said that it was not yet definite that Casebolt committed a crime with his actions, but that the department was analyzing the precise extent of his policy violations.

Brandon Brooks, the white teen who filmed the incident, also thinks it was a racial response. “A bunch of white parents were angry that a bunch of black kids who don’t live in the neighborhood were in the pool,” he said. McKinney Mayor Brian Loughmiller said he was “disturbed and concerned by the incident,” and promised that City Council and the Police would examine the incident with restraint and professionalism."

Right.

I will believe it when I see it.

An alleged racist and a convicted tax cheat. And once again an unarmed black man is shot by the police.

These past few months haven't been good to my friends in the GOP.

Yes, thanks to more moderate candidates and the inability of democrats to articulate their message and run on the accomplishments of their president, they (republicans) won sweeping victories in the mid-term elections.

Now, though, they find themselves having to deal with a racist and a tax cheat in their fold. This, coupled with the fact that ----thanks to an ongoing economic recovery---- their sworn enemy, Barack Obama, is enjoying his highest approval ratings in a very long time. 

Of course, in the case of the racist, he is being supported by his party leaders who seem to think that adding one more racist to a party with a perception problem when it comes to matters of race is a good idea.

"More than a decade ago, Representative Scalise made an error in judgment, and he was right to acknowledge it was wrong and inappropriate. Like many of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, I know Steve to be a man of high integrity and good character. He has my full confidence as our Whip, and he will continue to do great and important work for all Americans,"

To me, Representative Scalise didn't just make "an error in judgment". He knew exactly who he was speaking to when he spoke to that white supremacist group and why he was doing it. The fact that he called racism a "novelty" and  his only issue with David Duke is that he couldn't get elected tells you all you need to know about the man.

"The novelty of David Duke has worn off," Scalise said. "The voters in this district are smart enough to realize that they need to get behind someone who not only believes in the issues they care about, but also can get elected. Duke has proven that he can't get elected, and that's the first and most important thing."

All this of course, speaks to a larger issue with the GOP and men like Steve Scalise. If you go into the comments section of conservative blogs (and even progressive blogs like this one) you will see the overwhelming support for what Scalise did back in 2002. What's the big deal? They ask. Aren't the Al Sharptons and Jesse Jacksons of the world black supremacist? Why demonize this poor man for standing up for white people? If you happen to have this point of view that's fine. But the problem for those with these views is that most of our leaders who happen to share these views can't state so publicly.

Unfortunately for folks like Steve Scalise and his many supporters, it's just not cool to be a racist publicly in America these days. Publicly.

Sadly for them, though, they still have to reassure like-minded people that they still have their backs in this politically correct world where the brown people are slowly taking over.

"He [Scalise] has never been affiliated with the abhorrent group in question. The hate-fueled ignorance and intolerance that group projects is in stark contradiction to what Mr. Scalise believes and practices as a father, a husband, and a devoted Catholic.." 

Translated: Sorry y'all, now that I have been exposed I have to disavow any knowledge of what we were trying to do back then. But hang in there with me, as soon as this all blows over it will be business as usual.

Finally, I can't let tonight's post go without highlighting yet another police shooting of an unarmed man here in America.

"Houston, Texas – This week, Houston police shot an unarmed man multiple times because he was acting suspicious and not obeying their commands. Two officers fired multiple shots at 38-year old Mike Walker, with some of those shots being fired even after it was obvious that he did not have a gun.

The shooting occurred in the parking lot of a convenience store on Buffalo Speedway and West Fuqua, in front of multiple witnesses.

Walker was the passenger in a car that was pulled over for making an illegal lane change, but whether or not the driver was actually guilty of any traffic violations has not yet been proven. When the driver of the vehicle saw the police lights behind him, he pulled into a nearby Sunny’s Food Store.

According to police, they ordered the occupants of the car to sit still and put their hands up, and then they claim that Walker ignored their orders and reached under his seat. That’s when police immediately opened fire.

At that point, Walker, after already being shot, got out of the car  and began to strip off his clothes. Clearly unarmed and not posing a threat, another officer got involved and shot him several more times.

“When I was about to walk into the store, I heard gunshots, so immediately I turned around and grabbed my son and got us both on the ground,” witness Laquesha Spencer told 2 News.
“I’m telling him ‘Lay down, they are going to shoot you. They are going to kill you.’ And I guess he was in shock, he had already been shot three times, because I heard multiple gunshots,” Spencer said.

There were a number of witnesses who overwhelmingly agreed that the police used excessive force and unnecessarily escalated the situation.

In a statement to the media, Houston Police Department spokesman Victor Senties said:

They saw the doors open up, one of the officers gave repeated verbal commands to stay inside the vehicle, then the officer went to brace the door to keep him (the passenger) inside. At one point he had his arm all the way under the seat, right up to the elbow, as if he was trying to grab something. The officer gave him commands to show his hands … at that point the officer was in fear of his life and that of his partner. The second officer seeing the suspect try to reach into his waistband and into his sweater as if he was trying to locate something. He also feared for his safety and once he was out of the area, where there were people behind him the officer discharged his weapon as well.”

However, many witnesses dispute this struggle, and say that the man was simply ignoring officers, but not being aggressive in any way.

According to the victims mother, the police would not let her into the hospital to see her son, and had guarded his room for hours after the shooting.

“I was there ’till about 5 a.m. this morning, they have a police officer in his room and they won’t let me in there. He didn’t even have a gun. He’s never owned a weapon, he didn’t have one on him,” 53-year-old Laura Walker told reporters.

After shooting Walker, Police then arrested the driver and impounded his car to search for weapons, but they have not said if the driver, or Walker will face any charges.

Walker is currently being treated at Ben Taub Hospital where he is listed in serious, but stable condition." [Source]

So they still not sure if Walker will be even charged with a crime. Interesting.

I swear that there should be this code be in the criminal statutes of some states: Acting suspicious while black. Punishable by serious wounding or even death.