Pinellas Deputy Kills Black Man During Drug Raid - Black Activist Group Wants Justice
Friday, April 22, 2005 at 03:30PM
TheSpook
A member of the Pinellas County sheriff's SWAT team shot and killed a
19-year-old man Tuesday night while a search warrant was being served
at a suspected drug house. A sheriff's spokesman said Cpl. Chris Taylor
fired twice at Jarrell S. Walker as Walker ignored orders to show his
hands and reached under a couch for something. Although a loaded 9 mm
handgun was found on a pillow on a different couch in the room, there
was none under the couch where Walker appeared to be searching,
sheriff's spokesman Mac McMullen said. To Walker's family, it seemed
Taylor used his .45- caliber service weapon on an unarmed man. The
family has enlisted the black activist group the International People's
Democratic Uhuru Movement, and the group is holding a news conference
today at its St. Petersburg headquarters. ``If they think they're going
to get away with this, tell them don't,'' said Wanda Walker, Jarrell's
mother. ``The gun is not the issue. The gun was not there.'' The
shooting evoked last year's shooting of a St. Petersburg teenager, also
African-American, by deputies. The shooting was at least the
third in the six-year career of Cpl. Christopher Taylor, who has been
put on paid leave pending an investigation. He was cleared of
wrongdoing in previous cases. [more] and [more]
Article originally appeared on (http://brownwatch.com/).
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