Tag: riots
Protester featured in iconic Ferguson photo found dead of self-inflicted gunshot wound
ST. LOUIS • Edward Crawford, the man featured in a Ferguson protest photograph throwing a tear gas canister back toward police, was found dead late Thursday, his father said. Police say it appears the death was from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Crawford’s father, Edward Sr., confirmed his son’s death to the Post-Dispatch. He said his son’s mother called him and they went together to the morgue early Friday to identify their son’s body. Crawford Sr. was in tears Friday as he spoke with a reporter.
The medical examiner’s office says the death of Edward S. Crawford Jr. was reported as a suicide at 11:46 p.m. Thursday. However, the official cause of death is pending the results of an autopsy. The shooting was in the 1400 block of Salisbury Street, in the Hyde Park neighborhood of St. Louis.
Crawford lived in the 7000 block of Dover Court in University City.
According to a police summary, Crawford was in the back seat of a car heading east on Salisbury, approaching Blair Avenue near Hyde Park. Two women were in the car with him.
The women told police that Crawford had started talking about how distraught he was over “personal matters.” They heard him rummaging for something in the backseat, and the next thing they knew he shot himself in the head.
Crawford’s father, 52, said he believed it was an accidental shooting, not intentional. “I don’t believe it was a suicide,” he said. He said investigators weren’t saying much to him yet. “They’re being hush-hush,” the father said.
The case is being handled by district detectives, not homicide investigators Edward Crawford found instant fame after coming forward as the man in the photograph of a protester lobbing a tear gas canister. Photo by Robert Cohen, [email protected]
Edward Crawford Sr. said he last saw his son two days ago; he was in good spirits, certainly not suicidal.
“He was wonderful, great, always in a good mood,” the father said. “He just got a new apartment and was training for a new job” at a Schnucks warehouse.
The younger Crawford, 27, was the father of four children. “He loved them to death,” Crawford Sr. said.
The incident was part of protests on Aug. 12-13, 2014, near Chambers Road. The photograph was part of the Post-Dispatch’s coverage that won the Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography in 2015.
For many, the act summed up the anger directed at police after the shooting of unarmed black teen Michael Brown. It represented defiance against police aggression. Crawford told the Post-Dispatch that throwing the canister wasn’t an act of rebellion, but an instinct.
“I didn’t throw a burning can back at police,” Crawford told the newspaper in August 2015, after the county counselor’s office cited Crawford under two county ordinances for interfering with a police officer and assault. “I threw it out of the way of children.”
Crawford’s attorney, Jerryl Christmas, said he had a meeting with Crawford set for 4 p.m. Thursday to discuss plea negotiations on the pending charges of interfering with a police officer and assault stemming from August 2014 protests in Ferguson. But Crawford didn’t show.
The plea deal would have dropped Crawford’s charges in exchange for community service, Christmas said, but he said Crawford “was adamant that he was not guilty” and wanted a trial. Christmas said he had no indication that Crawford was suicidal and was “suspicious” about his death. “Edward was a very bright, energetic, young man and I think he had a wonderful future ahead of him,” Christmas said.
After learning of his death Friday morning, Missouri Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal, D-University City, reflected on social media:
“He is #Ferguson’s hero,” the senator wrote on her Twitter account. “For those of us tear-gassed, he was our local champion.” Chappelle-Nadal said she never met Crawford. But he became a symbol. “For him to throw it back, it was a rebellion … to say this is not right. We are gonna stand here and not be invisible.”
She said some people, locally and nationally, were living in desperate times with a feeling of hopelessness. She said the death was equally sad regardless of whether it was a suicide or an accident.
Christine Byers and Joel Currier of the Post-Dispatch staff contributed to this report.
Darren Wilson profile in ‘New Yorker’ riles activists
ST. LOUIS (KTVI) – With the one-year anniversary of Michael Brown’s shooting death this Sunday, New Yorker magazine published a profile Monday morning of the former police officer who shot and killed the Ferguson teenager. That story, which delves into Darren Wilson’s upbringing and the moments leading up to his fateful encounter with the 18-year-old Brown, as well as Wilson’s current life in hiding, has drawn the ire of activists online. Writer Jake Halpern’s 10,000-word profile piece on Wilson, entitled ‘The Man Who Shot Michael Brown,’ is based on a series of interviews with the 29-year-old former police officer and his wife, conducted since March 2015. Wilson, who has since moved to “the outskirts of St. Louis,” said he began receiving death threats shortly after shooting Brown. An U.S. Justice Department-led investigation into the events of the shooting concluded Wilson did not willfully violate Brown’s civil rights and cleared him of wrongdoing. However, a second report by the DoJ blasted practices by the city and its police force regarding arrests and fines levied against black citizens in overwhelmingly high numbers. Shortly after the profile piece was published, civil rights activist DeRay McKesson took to Twitter to accuse The New Yorker of “humanizing” Wilson, adding “watch whiteness work” in a subsequent tweet.
via: http://fox2now.com/2015/08/03/darren-wilson-profile-in-new-yorker-riles-activists/