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New Details About Victor White III’s Shooting Challenge Police Account
New details have emerged about the circumstances surrounding the death of Victor White III, a 22-year-old African American man who died last March while handcuffed in the back of a Louisiana police car.
That setup already sounds problematic, and according to recent reports by Vice and local station KATC in Lafayette, La., the story has been further complicated by a report from the Iberia Parish Coroner’s Office.
Trooper Stephen Hammons issued the state police account to the press in March, claiming that while investigating a fight at a convenience store, officers apprehended White for allegedly possessing narcotics and drove him to the sheriff’s station, but he refused to get out of the cop car when they arrived. Here’s where the official version veers into iffy territory: While a deputy sought assistance, Hammons relayed, White somehow produced a gun and fatally shot himself in the back.
Among many others, Vice’s Wilbert L. Cooper wasn’t satisfied with that explanation, and after months of thwarted attempts to contact local officials, his suspicions were further fed by the discreet emergence of the coroner’s report last week:
First off, the cause of death according to the report was a suicide, which is drastically different from the seemingly accidental shooting initially described by police officials. According to Victor III’s family, he had no history of mental illness or depression. And even if he did, the back seat of a cop car at one in the morning is a strange place to decide to snuff it.
Despite initial statements made by authorities that said Victor III was shot in the back, the report describes no back wounds at all. Instead, his cause of death is described as a gunshot to his right chest that perforated his left lung and heart, exited through his left armpit, and lacerated his upper arm. It was reported in initial local accounts of the shooting that Victor III was handcuffed behind his back. So in order for him to have shot himself in the chest, he would have had to pull himself through his cuffed arms in the backseat of that cop car—and of course, have a gun in the first place.
The report also lists two abrasions on Victor III’s upper left face and around his eye, which seems to be in line with what White’s father, Victor White Sr., told me a couple weeks after his son’s death: “I know they beat him before he arrived at the station,” he said, “because those who were with him before he was arrested said he didn’t have a mark on him.”
I spoke again with Victor Sr. after he’d spent some time looking at the report. The man was in a state of bewilderment and exhaustion, because after more than six months, he still has no idea what happened to his son and the explanations just don’t add up.
The confusion surrounding White’s death is further compounded by the fact that, once again according to the Iberia Parish Sheriff Louis Ackal’s office, there aren’t any surveillance cameras monitoring the part of the parking lot where the shooting occurred.
The FBI had already been alerted to potential trouble at the Iberia Sheriff’s Department in late 2013, as the sheriff’s office confirmed in November that the agency was investigating a separate case of alleged police brutality by at least one deputy from the department. That incident, which occurred last September, was caught on videotape and quickly posted on YouTube.
—Posted by Donald Kaufman. and Kasia Anderson
Additional links:
Click here for more information about the White family’s GoFundMe campaign to raise money for an independent autopsy of Victor White III and additional crime-scene assessments.
Read more on the private business of the parish jail system in Louisiana, where one in 86 adults ends up behind bars, here.
Related Entries
- August 25, 2014 When Mistakes Become Deadly
- August 25, 2014 Ferguson
Source: http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/new_details_about_victor_white_iiis_shooting_challenge_police_account_20140/
