Elio Carrion, 21 tuổi, ngồi kế bên người lái trong một chiếc xe Corvette không tuân lệnh cảnh sát dừng lại và họ đã bị cảnh sát truy đuổi trong vòng 5 phút, tốc độ có lúc lên tới 100 mph. Cuộc truy đuổi đã kết thúc bất ngờ khi chiếc xe này đụng vào một bức tường.
Chuyện xảy ra sau đó tình cờ đã được ghi lại trên băng video bởi một người tên là Jose Luis Valdez vì câu chuyện xảy ra trước nhà anh ta.
Trong video có thể thấy Carrion đã được khống chế, đang ngồi bệt dưới đất và một cảnh sát đang cầm súng trên tay đứng kế bên.
Sau đó người cảnh sát đó hô lớn bảo Carrion đứng lên. Carrion nói OK hai lần như vậy và lần thứ hai Carrion chống tay đứng lên. Nhưng vừa đúng lúc người này hơi nhỏm dậy, viên cảnh sát vừa ra lệnh đó đã nổ súng. Carrion bị bắn trúng ở ngực, vai và đùi ngã xuống đất vừa rên la vừa giải thích. Viên cảnh sát nói: "Câm miệng lại!" và "Mày không được đứng lên!"
Ngay sau đó có thể nghe được tiếng của người hàng xóm đang chứng kiến cảnh đó nói rằng: "Nhưng mà ông đã bảo người ta đứng lên mà?"
Câu chuyện này đã không thể bỏ qua dễ dàng được vì thứ nhất, nạn nhân là một quân nhân đang phục vụ ở Iraq và thứ hai là diễn biến ở hiện trường đã được thu hình và phát tán lên đài TV và YouTube sau đó. Nhưng cho dù là vậy, viên cảnh sát đó vẫn được một bồi thẩm đoàn tuyên bố không có làm sai chuyện gì cả và do đó hoàn toàn không chịu trách nhiệm hình sự.
Carrion không chết nhưng thương tích đã làm cho anh này không thể chạy nhảy và chơi thể thao, gặp khó khăn khi muốn quì hay nằm xuống.
Các bạn lưu ý, trong trường hợp này , người bị cảnh sát bắn hoàn toàn không có vũ khí trong tay, đã bị bắt, hoàn toàn không chống cự và đang làm theo lệnh của cảnh sát.
Trong entry "Anh rể, em vợ bị bắn chết sau khi có người gọi cảnh sát đến 'giúp'" , có bản tin dẫn chứng nhan đề "Diverse Crowd Remembers Korean Men Shot and Killed by Police", mà nội dung có nhắc đến việc một người gốc Hoa tên Kuang Chung Kao đã bị cảnh sát bắn chết trước nhà năm 1997 vì họ cho rằng ông ta là người Hoa nên có võ đánh chết người!
Trong entry này tôi có dẫn ba nguồn tin tức và video về vụ này. Đầu tiên là một video clip trên YouTube, kế đến là mẩu tin của CNN ngay sau khi câu chuyện vừa xảy ra, và cuối cùng là tin tức nói về bồi thẩm đoàn nói viên cảnh sát nổ súng đã không làm gì sai.
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Wednesday, February 1, 2006; Posted: 12:21 p.m. EST (17:21 GMT)
LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- A videotape shows a sheriff's deputy shooting an unarmed Iraq war veteran who appears to be following orders to get up off the ground, and now the FBI is investigating for possible civil rights violations.
Elio Carrion, an Air Force policeman who spent six months deployed in Iraq, was to have rejoined his unit Tuesday. Instead, he was hospitalized in good condition.
The incident began Sunday night, officials said, when Carrion was a passenger in a blue Corvette that was speeding about 100 mph near the Chino Hills, California, area, east of Los Angeles.
The driver, whom authorities didn't identify, failed to pull the car over after police signaled to do so, leading to a five-minute chase that ended abruptly when the vehicle crashed into a brick wall, said Cindy Beavers, a spokeswoman for the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department.
What happened next was captured on video shot by amateur photographer Jose Luis Valdez, who told The Associated Press that he recorded the incident after the car crashed in front of his home. KTLA-TV aired the videotape early Tuesday, then distributed it later in the day.
In the tape, an unarmed Carrion appears to be on the ground as a deputy sheriff stands above him with his gun drawn.
"Get up!" the deputy shouts. "OK," Carrion says.
"Get up!" the deputy shouts again. "I'm going to get up," Carrion says, and he begins to rise.
The deputy fires three shots, reportedly striking Carrion in the chest, leg and shoulder.
Moaning while on the ground, Carrion attempts to explain to the deputy he's an Iraq war veteran. "I mean you no harm," he says. "Shut the [expletive] up!" the deputy shouts. "Shut the [expletive] up!"
The deputy shouts that he has "one down," then again tells Carrion to "shut the [expletive] up."
"You don't get up!" the deputy says.
Then the tape contains the voice of a neighbor who appears to have watched the incident. "You told him to get up!" the voice says.
Beavers, the sheriff's spokesman, declined to release the name of the deputy involved in the shooting but said he was put on leave. She said Sheriff Gary Penrod had invited the FBI to join the investigation.
FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller and U.S. attorney's office spokesman Thom Mrozek confirmed the the agency's involvement on behalf of the Justice Department.
They said the FBI would look into possible civil rights violations. Media reports prompted the probe, Mrozek said.
Beavers said the sheriff's department would review the video forensically "to clear up any questions about dialogue."
"We think it is unfair to make any sort of judgment against any of the parties involved," she said.
The driver of the car, she said, was arrested on charges of felony evading.
CNN's Chris Lawrence contributed to this report.
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In his first public statement since the June 28 verdict, Carrion admitted to TODAY co-host Meredith Vieira that he did do some things wrong on the January 2006 night when former San Bernardino County Deputy Sheriff Ivory Webb shot Carrion as he was attempting to obey the officer’s order to stand up.
Carrion had been a passenger in a Corvette driven by a friend who had crashed after leading Webb on a 100-mph chase through residential neighborhoods in the town of Chino, Calif. A video shot by a witness shows the officer and Carrion, who is on the ground outside the car, cursing at each other. The officer orders Carrion to stand, and as he is complying, Webb shoots him three times.
Elio Carrion
"Yes," Carrion replied when Vieira asked "Do you think you did anything wrong that night?" "When I used profanity against him, that was wrong." But, he continued, "when he approached us, he was out of control, using profanity a lot, saying the F-word a lot, like, ‘You, shut the F up.’ I was trying to calm him down because he seemed out of control."
He said that Webb seemed to calm down when Carrion cursed back at him.
But Carrion, who admitted that he had been drinking, maintained as he has all along that he did nothing else that warranted being shot. And, he said, as a military policeman who served six months in Iraq, "I used to be pro-cop. But now, since this happened ... It’s very hard to tell who you can trust these days."
Although he was acquitted of charges of attempted voluntary manslaughter and assault with a weapon, Webb, who was dismissed from his job, still could face federal charges of violating Carrion’s civil rights. Carrion is also pursuing a civil case against Webb.
Webb maintained that he thought Carrion was reaching into his jacket as he attempted to push himself up. In an earlier appearance on TODAY, Webb said, "Law enforcement officers are trained to assume that suspects are dangerous and have weapons."
"I was on the ground. I pushed my upper body up," Carrion told Vieira as the video of the shooting ran on a split screen. "The jacket — it has no pockets, it has no zipper. It’s a pullover jacket ... I had no pockets. I had no weapon."
Vieira asked Carrion to put himself in Webb’s shoes. "You are chasing after a car that’s going 100 miles per hour, your adrenaline is going, there are two of you in the car. One officer. Might you not respond somewhat the way he did?" she asked.
"No," the military policeman said. "I would not have approached the vehicle at all. We’re trained to wait for backup, no matter how long it takes. Because if he [encountered] two suspects like that — who knows what could happen? The officer could be hurt."
‘Mystified by the verdict’
Carrion said he is mystified by the verdict. "I don’t know how the jury found that it was justified. Clear as day, he said twice, ‘Get up, get up.’ And then I repeated, ‘I’m going to get up now.’ I did not even get up fully. I pushed my upper body up and then I got shot three times and fell back."
Carrion, 23, was hit in the chest, behind the left shoulder and in the left femur. He re-enlisted in the Air Force and is confined to desk duty at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana because of his injuries. On Thursday, he was presented the Army Commendation Medal for work performed in Iraq.
"I can’t run, do sports, jump. It’s very hard to kneel down, lay on the ground, stuff like that," he said. Carrion is married and has a young daughter.
After the verdict, Carrion did not speak to anyone about it, including his wife. Asked why he chose to speak out now, he replied, "I just think it’s the right time now. The defense attorney has been portraying me as a drunk, defiant of the law — stuff like that. I just wanted to come out and say that’s totally false."
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