Video Shows Defenseless Man Killed in Walmart

Written by: NiRA

On 5^th of August in 2014, police shot a defenceless man aged 22 year old and named John Crawford III in a Walmart in Dayton, Ohio. Recently a video footage was released which shows the moment when police killed him.

A call made on 911 reported in 5^th August that a gloomy man was wandering in Walmart swaying what seemed to be a rifle. After the gun shot, police reported that Mr. Crawford constantly refused requests made by the police to put the deceptive rifle down.

The freshly released Walmart video footage tells a different story. The video shows that Mr. Crawford picked up a BB-gun that was open on a shelf in the sporting merchandises section, that Mr. Crawford carried the BB-gun around the Walmart store as he continued to the shop, rest of the customers in the Walmart walked around Mr. Crawford in deceptive nonchalance, after more than eight minutes somebody called 911 and the police responded to the call and then they shot Mr. Crawford without even asking him to put the BB-gun down

The moment when police shot and killed Mr. Crawford for carrying the BB-gun in the Walmart can be perceived at time 1:30 the video extract. This resembles to the overall 8:26:56 AM time stamp for the surveillance video.

On 24^th September 2014, a grand jury came up with the conclusion that the action of the two officers was defensible in killing Mr. Crawford, who was black (However the officers were white, so is this racism case?). At a press conference after the decision, the special prosecutor, Mark Piepmeier, defended both the grand jury’s decision and the police killing of Mr. Crawford as being justified based upon the reports by the 911 caller that a black man was carrying a loaded assault rifle and was pointing the rifle at people. Piepmeir said that the only benchmark that can be smears to police is not what actually is factual but exclusively what they believed to be factual.

Piepmeir did acknowledged that Mr. Crawford did nothing wrong but did appeared to blame Mr. Crawford for being on the cell phone and for supposedly not responding to police commands to put his gun down. Piepmeir seemed to endeavour to strengthen the reliability of the mistaken 911 caller by stating that the caller was an ex-marie.

After the judgment, Mr. Crawford’s family released a statement:-

“The Crawford family is extremely disappointed, disgusted and confused, (they are heartbroken that justice was not done in the tragic death of their only son.)”

Community actions objected the unfairness of the verdict.

President Derrick L. Foward said:-

“My gut was telling me the right decision was going to be made today. That didn’t happen. My gut was wrong. We are going to strategically organize to ensure that justice is brought about in this case.”

The Crawford family also had to say that:-

“The Walmart surveillance video and eyewitnesses prove that the killing of John H. Crawford, lll was not justified and was not reasonable. It is undisputed that John Crawford, lll was in Walmart as a customer and was not posing a threat to anyone in the store, especially the police officers.”

A University of Dayton law professor, Lori Shaw, substantiated the grand jury’s decision, she said:-

“I think in this particular instance, because the police had reason to believe that a weapon was involved, it made it much less likely that there would be a charge,”

Mark DeWine, the Attorney General of Ohio has been censured by civil rights groups, along with the NAACP, for his mismanagement of shooting death of Mr. Crawford.

Another Wal-Mart customer, Angela Williams who is 37 years old, went into medical suffering during the store’s withdrawal and passed away, turning into the second casualty as a result of the police actions.

The whole Anonymous team wishes that the suffering families get the strength to overcome the hard times and the souls of the people who suffered the casualty from the accident Rest In Peace.