The Family of a Black Teen Shot to Death by Palm Beach County Police Wants Answers

Broward Palm Beach Blog

It was December 13, 2012, when 40-year-old Sunjee Louissaint, a soft-spoken woman with gentle eyes, looked across the front yard of her West Palm Beach home and saw two green-and-gold-striped Palm Beach County Sheriff's cruisers. 

Two deputies had pinned her 17-year-old son, Devin, to the ground. She heard a bang and, suddenly, his body shook violently.

Louissaint thought he had been hit with a Taser. Then she saw the blood. He's been shot, she thought.

"I ran over and put my face on the ground," she recalls, "because his face was on the ground, and I saw his eyes were dilated. He was gone."

Devin Jolicoeur died of gunshot wounds in the early evening that Thursday. Four bullets pierced his chest and one his hand. Not only his mother, but also his grandmother, aunt, and best friend were there. So were several other family friends and neighbors who had come out to see why police were questioning the teen.

After a brief investigation, Palm Beach State Attorney Dave Aronberg ruled the shooting justified. Josh Kushel, the deputy who had fired the gun that killed Devin, claimed the kid had pointed a gun at his partner, Sgt. James Hightower.

But many questions remain unanswered. Several witnesses said they never saw the boy draw a gun. Officers seemingly contradicted one another in testimony after the shooting. And they either lied or were mistaken about the presence of marijuana, which they used as a basis for the interrogation.

"They murdered my son, and then they lied about him," Louissaint insists. "It just didn't happen like they said it did. Not at all."