POLICE BRUTALITY WATCH: AUTOPSY SHOWS MENTALLY ILL MAN, DONTRE HAMILTON, WAS SHOT 14 TIMES BY MILWAUKEE POLICE (2671 hits)
Autopsy Shows Mentally Ill Man Shot From Behind and Above, 14 Times December 3, 2014
BreakingBrown reported in October that the officer who killed Dontre Hamilton had been fired from the Milwaukee Police Department. Now an autopsy confirms that the 31 year old mentally ill man was shot from behind and above.
First, here’s some background from our original report on the incident that ended with Milwaukee Police Officer Christopher Manney fatally shooting Hamilton:
Hamilton was sleeping at a park when Manney began a patdown of the man. When Hamilton resisted, that led to a physical altercation that ended with Manney fatally shooting Hamilton. Manney claims that Hamilton struck him with his own police baton, an assertion which the man’s family strongly doubts.
Manney said in a statement that he believed Hamilton was emotionally disturbed and saw a bulge in Hamilton’s pockets.
“I would say that any officer who didn’t conduct a pat-down search of Hamilton in these exact circumstances would be acting irresponsibly as it relates to their own safety,” Manney wrote.
The killing occurred on April 30 and Manney was fired on October 15 over the improper pat down of the mentally ill man that led to the struggle.
The autopsy reveals that Hamilton was shot 14 times, both from behind and above.
“Dontre did have blunt force trauma injuries to his head and face,” Hamilton family attorney Jonathan Safran said. “We wanted there to be more evidence about the 14 shots that were fired. Seven of those would appear to be in a downward direction based upon the medical examiner’s report. One of the shots being into Dontre’s back.”
Safran continued: “The wounds show that at least half of them were in a downward direction, even though they were both supposedly standing. There’s one that reflects it was shot into Dontre Hamilton’s back.”
It also shows “no stippling or unburned or burned gunpowder particles on [Hamilton’s] skin,” which indicates that Hamilton was shot from a distance, added Safran. In addition, the toxicology summary proved that Hamilton was not on illegal drugs.
In a strikingly racist similarity, just as Darren Wilson described Michael Brown as a superhuman figure during grand jury testimony, Manney described Hamilton as foe he could not have overcome with his own strength. Manney says Hamilton was “considerably younger than me, in much better shape than me, and much stronger and more muscular than me.”
In reality, Hamilton was only a 169-pound, 5-foot-7 man, hardly the mythic figure Manney described in his report.
Thus far, there is no evidence, none, to support Manney’s version of events.
