Delaware Cops Shoot and Kill Paralyzed Black Man in Wheelchair

September 30, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

This was murder. He shot my son like he was roadkill.

Phyllis McDole

Another horrific video of the police shooting and killing a Black man in cold blood.

According to Wilmington, Delaware police, someone called 911 on September 23 to report that Jeremy McDole shot himself. Jeremy McDole is a 28-year-old man in a wheelchair. He is paralyzed from the waist down. He lives in a nursing home.

And he is Black. How did the system respond to what—if their story is to be believed—might have been a suicidal, paralyzed Black man in a wheelchair? Were counselors sent to the scene to provide assistance to this human being?

The response is on video, filmed by someone in the neighborhood. It starts with a cop coming on the scene where McDole is sitting in his wheelchair. It ends, one minute and 23 seconds later, with Jeremy McDole lying on the ground DEAD. Watch the video here:

The first cop approaches, already aiming a shoulder-fired weapon. Within about 4 seconds, he fires, starts yelling for McDole to put his hands up, then pumps the gun, ready to shoot again. Three more cops arrive with pistols drawn. You see Jeremy shifting his weight in his wheelchair. You hear the guy taking the video saying, “He’s bleeding, he’s bleeding.” No gun or anything else is visible in McDole’s hands. The cops are all yelling at him to put his hands up. About 35 seconds after the other cops arrive, you hear a hail of bullets. You see Jeremy McDole fall out of his wheelchair to the ground.

Phyllis McDole, Jeremy’s mother said, “He wasn’t bothering anybody. He didn’t have a weapon or anything. He stood up and pulled his pants up and sat back down and put his hands on his lap and they opened fire on him….They shot my son so much he fell out of the wheelchair…. He wasn’t armed. He didn’t have a gun. He died by himself. He died alone.”

Phyllis McDole interrupted a news conference by the chief of police the day after her son was killed. When Chief Bobby L. Cummings ran out the cops’ story that Jeremy had removed a weapon from his waistband, Phyllis stood up to dispute this account saying, “This is unjust—he was in a wheelchair. There’s video showing that he didn’t pull a weapon, he had his hands on his lap.” (See video of Phyllis McDole speaking before the press.)

There is anger and outrage. The New York Times reported tense encounters between residents and police, including one where objects were thrown at police responding to a different incident. Jeremy’s uncle, Eugene Smith, who was among those gathered at the scene of the shooting, said, “It was an execution.”

 

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