Ohio officer acquitted of killing mom holding baby
Tuesday, August 5th, 2008 at 6:03 pm | By: Radical Russ
Ohio officer acquitted of killing mom holding baby – Yahoo! News
LIMA, Ohio – A white police officer was acquitted Monday in the drug-raid shooting death of an unarmed black woman that set off protests about how police treat minorities in a city where one in four residents is black.The all-white jury found Sgt. Joseph Chavalia not guilty of misdemeanor charges of negligent homicide and negligent assault. He had faced up to eight months in jail if convicted of both counts.
Chavalia shot 26-year-old Tarika Wilson and her year-old son she was holding, killing her and hitting him in the shoulder and hand, during a Jan. 4 SWAT raid on her house. One of the child’s fingers had to be amputated.
Officers had been looking for Wilson’s boyfriend, a suspected drug dealer.
Prosecutors said Chavalia recklessly fired three shots into a bedroom where Wilson and her six children were gathered, even though he could not clearly see her or whether she had a weapon.
“He couldn’t tell Tarika had a child in her arms,” Prosecutor Jeffrey Strausbaugh said during closing arguments Monday.
Chavalia, an officer of 32-years, had testified that he thought his life was in danger when he fired the shots. He said he saw a shadow coming from behind a partially open bedroom door and heard gunshots that he thought were aimed at him. It turned out the gunfire he heard was coming from downstairs, where officers shot two charging pit bulls.
Once again, the militarization of our domestic police force has led to an unnecessary death and an unnecessary maiming. During the trial, a forensic pathologist and firearms expert each said that bullet wounds indicate that Ms. Wilson wasn’t standing. She was likely on her knees and complying with the SWAT team’s orders to get down when she was shot, they testified.
The SWAT team was serving a night-time, no-knock raid. The guy they were after, Anthony Terry, is a convicted drug dealer who once tried to wrestle a police officer’s gun from him. So his home where a woman and child are present is the place to take him down? You don’t wait until he leaves the house to go run an errand? You don’t track the mom and kid to figure out if they are there?
Reading the comments from the defense team and some Ohio readers provide some insight. “You know who caused the death of Tarika Wilson?” asked the defense attorney. “Anthony Terry. And who caused the injury to [Tarika's son]? Anthony Terry.” Others played some version of the “she was living with a dangerous drug dealer so she deserved it” card (I guess the year-old boy deserved to lose a finger, too).
Marijuana never killed anyone, but its prohibition just killed a young black woman in Ohio.
