The Texas cop who shot an unarmed man for trying to break into his own truck – shooting him again after the man resisted an anal cavity search – was indicted by a grand jury last week.
“The jury got it right,” Dallas County District Attorney Faith Johnson announced after the indictment.
“We will be prosecuting this case very vigorously, we are seeking whatever we can get out of this case,” she said, vowing to seek the maximum punishment for Mesquite cop Derrick L. Wiley.
Dallas County DA Faith Johnson announces indictment of former Mesquite Police officer Derick Wiley
Lyndo Jones was shot while attempting to disable the alarm on his truck, which had malfunctioned on November 8.
Police said they were responding to reports of a possible car burglary after somebody nearby called 911 after hearing the alarm.
Seconds after their arrival, Wiley shot Jones in the stomach.
Then, after he resisted an anal cavity search, he was shot a second time in the back.
“Within 10 seconds of their arrival, he had been shot it the stomach,” Lee Merritt, an attorney representing 31-year-old Lyndo Jones, told WFAA8.
“While on the street suffering from his wound, officers attempted to perform a cavity search and he reacted to that, and he was shot a second time in his back.”
“Mr. Jones reacted to the unlawful sodomy and was consequently shot a second time in the back,” Justine Moore, another attorney representing Jones, said in a written statement.
Emergency personnel transported Jones to the Baylor Medical Center where he was handcuffed and shackled to his hospital bed and denied visits from his family.
In an attempt to avoid liability for the shooting, Mesquite police initially charged Jones with evading arrest.
The only problem was Jones didn’t commit a crime in the first place, so police had no legal reason to arrest him.
“That truck was his,” Moore said.
“How can you burglarize your own car?”
Jones remained handcuffed to his hospital bed for six days until November 14 when the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office rejected the charges against him.
Lyndo Jones
He was also interrogated in the hospital without his attorneys present.
It wasn’t until three weeks later, after the story went viral in news media, that Mesquite Police Chief Charles Cato fired officer Wiley on November 29
“Based upon the facts and recommendations presented to me, I made the decision to place Officer Derick Wiley on indefinite suspension. This is a term used for civil service employees, but it effectively means Officer Wiley’s employment has been terminated.”
Police denied performing an anal cavity search.
Instead, they say they were attempting to subdue Jones due to his amplified physical strength.
“The suspect demonstrated such physical strength; it took all three officers to hold him on the ground until paramedics arrived,” police said in a written statement, according to theDallas Morning News.
“I think that, I’m not an expert on human strength, but I think if someone has been shot and handcuffed and on the ground, and it still takes four large men to hold him down, that might indicate there are other factors in place,” Mesquite Police Department spokesman Lt. Brian Parrish told CBSlocal after the shooting.
“The issue was keeping him from moving around, from either running off or fighting, that’s why the officers were holding him down.”
Apparently, a Dallas County grand jury didn’t buy that story, which is why it indicted him on December 6.
Officer Wiley now faces five to 99 years in prison.
Office Wiley is the third cop caught on body camera shooting someone this year that has resulted in criminal charges against a cop in Dallas County.
Earlier this year, DA Johnson also announced murder charges against Balch Springs officer Roy Oliver, before a grand jury even indicted him, for shooting 15-year-old Jordan Edwards.
In that story, which we reported about in May, Oliver fired his assault rifle into a car where Edwards was riding as a passenger.
Dallas cop Roy Oliver (left) Jordan Edwards (right)
In June, a grand jury indicted Dallas police officer Christopher Hess for aggravated assault in the death of Genevive Dawes, a 21-year-old mother.
Hess and officer Jason Kimpel fired 13 bullets into Dawes’ car, killing her, according to the Texas Observer.
Dallas County prosecutors brought the case to the grand jury after body camera footage from the scene contradicted Hess’ account of the shooting and said body camera technology is a game changing tool for investigating police shootings.
The video below contains footage from Lyndo Jones talking about his experience after being release from the hospital.
(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = 'https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.11'; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));
WATCH: Lyndo Jones, the man shot by Mesquite Police last week after being suspected of breaking into a pickup truck (it was his pickup) and getting into a confrontation with an officer, speaks to the media. He's still at the hospital. The evading arrest charge against him was dropped tonight. READ MORE: http://cbsloc.al/2iVmKAP
Posted by CBS DFW on Tuesday, November 14, 2017
The post Texas Cop Indicted for Shooting Unarmed Man Burglarizing Own Truck appeared first on Photography is Not a Crime.