Questions surface in shooting of Black Man by Mesa cop: Police Felt Endangered by $4 Plastic Chair

“Uncle” Deon, known for his Kool-Aid Man smile, put his hands behind his back that morning and told officers: “Go ahead and cuff me. I’m going to jail.”  He was not smiling. The Mesa officers told 35-year-old James Deon Lennox to get on his knees. But, for whatever reason, he refused. Lennox’s neighbors watched from outside their doorways as the massive man and officers responding to a domestic argument call squared off in the apartment complex courtyard. To those neighbors, Lennox was a friend, a man they saw daily. To the officers, a stranger. That rift would widen in the coming moments and hours.  Before darkness turned to daylight on March 31, Lennox would receive a bullet in his head and another in his chest, both from an officer’s gun, as Lennox picked up a plastic lawn chair and turned toward the officers. That itself shocked neighbors enough. But it was the police explanation of the shooting, given later that day, that sent neighbors into a frenzy. The explanation was grim and sparse on details: Lennox beat an officer over the head “repeatedly” with a “hard, plastic chair.” When he reached for another plastic chair and came after officer David Kohler again, Kohler felt his life was in danger. So he squeezed his gun’s trigger twice.  Neighbors used some words that can’t be printed here to later describe how they felt about that explanation. But the message was clear: They wanted a chance to tell their version of how Lennox, or “JD” as they knew him, was sent to his grave. Witness Gary Hecht said, “you don’t shoot somebody over a $4 chair,” Hecht said during a recent interview. “Them same chairs are the ones that usually you sit on and then break the leg off of or you fall backward on or whatever. . . . They were junk. Just cheap chairs.” As the investigation has progressed, the department has acknowledged some uncertainty about whether Lennox hit Kohler “repeatedly” with a white plastic chair before he picked up the green one. The Hechts and Arnold have said Kohler was hit once when Lennox whirled the first plastic chair behind him. [MORE]