The police
vehicles screeched to a halt in front of the house shortly after
4:00 p.m. They ordered Lopez and her children away from Derek –
who, predictably, had risen to his feet by this time – and
then ordered him to remove his hands from his the pockets of his
sweatshirt.
Less than a
second later – according
to several eyewitnesses at the scene – Derek was hit with
a taser blast that knocked him sideways and sent him into convulsions.
His right hand involuntarily shot out of its pocket, clenching spasmodically.
“Not in
front of the kids,” Derek gasped, as he tried to force his
body to cooperate. “Get the kids out of here.”
The officers
continued to order Derek to put up his hands; he was physically
unable to comply.
So they tased
him again. This time he was driven to his side and vomited into
a nearby flower bed.
Howard Mixon,
a contractor who had been working nearby, couldn't abide the spectacle.
“That's
not necessary!” he bellowed at the assailants. “That's
overkill! That's overkill!”
At this point,
one of the heroes in blue (or, in this case, black) swaggered over
to Mixon and snarled, “I'll f*****g show you overkill!”
Having heroically shut up an unarmed civilian, the officer turned
his attention back to Derek – who was being tased yet again.
“I'm trying
to get my hands out,” Derek exclaimed, desperately trying to
make his tortured and traumatized body obey his will. Horrified,
his friend Sandra screamed at the officers: “He is trying to
get his hands out, he cannot get his hands out!”
Having established
that Derek – an innocent man who had survived two tours of
duty in Iraq – was defenseless, one of Wilmington's Finest
closed in for the kill.
Lt. William
Brown of the Wilmington Police Department, who was close enough
to seize and handcuff the helpless victim, instead shot him in the
chest at point-blank range, tearing apart his vitals with three
.40-caliber rounds. He did this after Derek had said, repeatedly
and explicitly, that he was trying to cooperate. He did this despite
the fact that witnesses on the scene had confirmed that Derek was
trying to cooperate. He did this in front of a traumatized mother
and two horrified children.
Why was this
done?
According to
Sgt. Steven Elliot of the WPD, Brown slaughtered Derek Hale because
he “feared for the safety of his fellow officers and believed
that the suspect was in a position to pose an imminent threat.”
That subjective belief was sufficient justification to use “deadly
force,” according to Sgt. Elliot.
The “position”
Derek was in, remember, was that of wallowing helplessly in his
own vomit, trying to overcome the cumulative effects of three completely
unjustified Taser attacks.
When asked
by the Wilmington News Journal last week if Hale had ever
threatened the officers – remember, there were at least 8 and
as many as 12 of them – Elliot replied: “In a sense, [he
threatened the officers] when he did not comply with their commands.”