The stars at night are big and bright...

The stars at night are big and bright...
The stars at night are big and bright...

Saturday, November 7, 2015

It gets worse.

If you thought that last story was shocking. You'd better sit down...

Three days after a 6-year-old boy was shot and killed by officers in a barrage of gunfire that also critically wounded the child’s father, authorities late Friday night arrested two of the four officers involved on one count each of second-degree murder and attempted second-degree murder.

Local deputy marshals Lt. Derrick Stafford, 32, and Norris Greenhouse Jr., 23, were on the scene when officers fired at least 18 rounds at an unarmed man and his son Tuesday night in Marksville, authorities said, after cornering the driver for unknown reasons following a chase.

State Police Superintendent Col. Mike Edmonson, who announced the arrests late Friday night as part of his agency’s investigation of the shooting, said of body camera footage of the incident: “It is one of the most disturbing scenes I have seen.”

Key details of the deadly episode remained a mystery even to the investigators early Friday, as two of the four agents in the event refused to speak to authorities 72 hours after the killing, prompting a rare public expression of misgivings toward officers by a law enforcement counterpart.

“It’s more concerning the longer it takes (for them) to talk to us,” said Edmonson earlier Friday. “All we want to know is what happened.”

Had his own troopers been involved in a similar altercation, he said, “we would have already interviewed them.”

Edmonson declined to say whether Stafford and Greenhouse were the two who were silent.

“Tonight is about Jeremy Mardis,” he said, referring to the first-grader shot to death. “That young man did not deserve to die like that.”

Jeremy was still in his seat belt at the time.

“That little boy was buckled in the front seat of that vehicle — and that is how he died,” Edmonson said.

Marksville Police Chief Elster Smith Jr., whose four officers were involved in the Tuesday night incident, said the other two lawmen involved are Lt. Jason Brouillette and Sgt. Kenneth Parnell.

More here, but it turns your stomach.

I hope they seek the Death Penalty.

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