CNN is reporting that the parents of a Pace University football player, Danroy 'D.J.' Henry, who was shot to death by police officer Aaron Hess last year, said Tuesday they are not surprised that a grand jury refused to indict the officer, since they believe the jurors heard faulty evidence.
"The presentation of the evidence and the facts was absolutely ineffective, based on what we know to be the truth, given our own investigation," Danroy Henry Sr. told CNN's American Morning. His son, 20-year-old Danroy "D.J." Henry Jr., was shot by police early on Oct. 17 outside a bar at a shopping center in Thornwood, N.Y., authorities said.
Grand jurors on Monday found "there was no reasonable cause to vote an indictment," Westchester County District Attorney Janet DiFiore said in a statement. There have been conflicting reports of what happened. Police officers maintain that they fired on Henry's car when he sped up and came toward them.
Donna Parks — whose son, a friend of Henry's, was shot and wounded in the incident — disputed the police account in an interview with CNN shortly after the shooting. She said that Henry and others in the car were waiting for a friend to come out of the establishment "when a police officer banged … on the window." She said Henry began driving after her son, Brandon Cox, told him that he thought police wanted him to move his car.
"Another police officer with his gun drawn just ran out in front of DJ's car," said Parks, insisting that Henry had no time to stop. Parks also said that authorities pulled Henry out of the car, placed him in handcuffs and left him facedown on the ground for 15 to 20 minutes, not realizing that he had been shot. The attorney for Hess acknowledges the error but said, "The tragedy of D.J. Henry's death cannot and should not be distorted to pursue an agenda which ignores the sad and painful truth that a 20-year-old man who by all accounts was a good and decent human being made very, very poor decisions that night and morning that brought about his own death."
Wow. Whether it is a cover-up, an accident or poor judgment, the result is the same: the senseless death of a young man who by all accounts was a decent human being, succeeding in life.
Read more at CNN.com.
In other news: Mom-in-Chief: Michelle Obama Promotes Breast-Feeding.