Mississippi police murder major college fooball recruit...maybe

If I had to guess, I would say the gun accidentally went off as he was trying to hide it from the officer. That could be the reason he got out of his vehicle and walked to the officer's car in the first place, so the officer wouldn't see he had a loaded weapon in his vehicle.

Of course, we'll never know.

And I'll reiterate what Buck said earlier. Suicide is a really strange thing. When I was in high school, a girl a couple of years older than me killed herself and it caught everyone off guard. She was the happiest kid in school, was gorgeous, dating the football team captain, voted Most Likely to Succeed and all that jazz. If you would have polled the 450 or so students at the school and asked which classmate would be most likely to commit suicide, she'd get zero votes. She did leave a suicide note for her parents and in the note she basically said all of the pressure and expectations of her being perfect just eventually became too much to bear.

 

That sounds pretty plausible, and good call on him getting out of the car to keep the cops from finding the gun. I was trying to figure out how he could have "accidentally" shot himself. I think you nailed it.

 

Tough, tough situation for the family.

You just want somebody to blame when bad things happen.

Nothing, not even time, will really ever ease their pain.

 

That's because you're a monkey-raping asshole ... maybe.

 

Post of the Day.

 

THAT'S IT! [/lucy]

 

Agreed. Damn solid.

 

I agree with buck. And, yes, I'm an asshole.

 

Well, unfortunately, I've hung around some shady characters in my lifetime and that seemed like standard procedure to "meet the officer halfway" when they had drugs or open alcohol in the vehicle. Surprisingly, it worked most of the time.

If anything, I hope cases like this convinces all these BFE police departments that having dashboard cams and performing the proper forensics technique are no longer reserved for the "big city" cops.

We recently had a case where an officer in a small town shot killed a person who was allegedly trying to run him over with his vehicle. Because the officer and the deceased victim were the only two at the scene, they had to take the officer's word that his life was in danger. The family of the victim brought charges against the department and officer, but the officer was cleared. Since then, all of the patrol cars in that town have been outfitted with dashboard cams.

 

Here's the grand jury report:
http://media.sunherald.com/smedia/2009/02/12/17/0213_George_County_Grand_Jury_Report.source.prod_affiliate.77.pdf

 

Predictable outcome.
Who knows why so much of the investigation was botched, or what really happened.
The officer(s) who destroyed evidence should be fired.

 

Fixed.