Lawyers for black woman, 20, who was injured when Illinois police killed her 19-year-old boyfriend says cop's bodycam was turned OFF during the shooting
The lawyers for a black woman who was injured in an Illinois police shooting in which her boyfriend was killed revealed Wednesday that the cop's bodycam was turned off, leaving no direct video evidence of the event.
Marcellis Stinnette, 19, was fatally shot and his girlfriend, Tafara Williams, 20, was wounded after Waukegan police shot them in their car on October 20.
Cops claim that the car fled a traffic stop earlier in the day before being spotted by another officer. The department alleges an officer then fired on the car only when it unexpectedly tried to flee the scene.
Yet Williams, who had a seven-month-old son with Stinnette, has disputed the official line, claiming they did nothing to provoke the officers and had their hands up when the officer opened fire.
The couple's families and lawyers had hoped that bodycam footage would establish the truth but were left disappointed Wednesday when the Waukegan police department announced the shooting officer had not turned on his bodycam before he opened fire.
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Attorney Antonio Romanucci revealed Wednesday that the officer who fatally shot Marcellis Stinnette, 19, and injured his girlfriend, Tafara Williams, 20, did not turn on his bodycam
Marcellis Stinnette, 19, was killed and his girlfriend and the mother of his child, Tafara Williams, was seriously injured when a police officer in Waukegan opened fire on October 20. On Friday night it was announced the officer involved had been fired
'We don't have the transparency. We don't have the truth,' attorney Antonio Romanucci told reporters outside of a state police post in Des Plaines.
He also accused the cop who shot the couple of immediately trying to create a false narrative around the incident when he turned on his bodycam for the aftermath of the shooting.
'Once the shooting officer turns on his bodycam, he says, "you tried to run me over". That is the false narrative,' he told reporters.
'He has zero credibility. There should be no weight given to his self-serving statement.'
On Friday, the police department fired the officer who shot Williams and Stinnette, described as a Hispanic, five-year veteran of the force. His identity has not been provided.
Waukegan Police Chief Wayne Walles said the officer had committed 'multiple policies and procedure violations' during the shooting.
'He was fired immediately because he failed to turn on his body camera in a deadly situation,' said Romanucci Wednesday. 'You can understand that now we don't have the transparency, we don't have the truth.'
Romanucci continued to say that the cop knew that the bodycam would have a 30-second audio delay once it was turned on and waited to make the statement about Williams trying to run him over.
'Once that bodycam went on, the false narrative came out - "you tried to run me over" - which in and of itself, in a vacuum, is justification for deadly force. But before that, he had the opportunity to do what he needed to do and he failed to do it,' he said, speaking about the failure to turn the camera on sooner.
Williams has disputed the cops' version of events and said they did nothing to provoke the officer into shooting them
'The official narrative was that of the officer, that was what the Waukegan police department released: that Tafara tried to run him over,' Romanucci continued.
The lawyer admitted that Williams was 'leaving, she was moving away from' the officer in the car but claimed that at no point did she attempt to run the cop over.
'The bodycam issue is so important,' he said. 'He failed to turn his bodycam on at the appropriate time and that would have resolved these issues one way or the other.'
Romanucci confirmed that no video found so far captured the exact moment of the shooting but did show when Williams crashed the car into a building as she tried to get away.
'We saw a number of videos today, maybe four or five, and there were also private surveillance videos from factories across the street,' he stated.
'They did not capture the shooting. They captured the crash into the building but don't see the shooting.
'Unfortunately, the car was pointed to the right of the shooting so the dashcam is pointing in a different direction to where the shooting took place,' he explained.
'So there is a dead-zone where we don't see what happened.'
The footage is expected to be made publicly available this week after it has been viewed by the families.
'What we saw was just bits and pieces,' Ben Crump, another attorney for the family, said.
'He knew at that point he had messed up and he's trying to come up with a narrative now to justify this unjustifiable excessive use of force,' he added of the officer's claim Williams tried to run him over.
Tafara Williams, 20, cried as she spoke to reporters in a Zoom call from her hospital room in Libertyville, Illinois on Tuesday evening, recounting how police shot and injured her and fatally shot her boyfriend 19-year-old Marcellis Stinnette, the father of her child
'What is it about young black people that make police officers want to pull triggers,' Crump, who also represents the family of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, continued.
'We need more transparency, we need better training of officers. We need them to think of our children as people and not targets.'
On Tuesday night, Williams spoke to reporters for the first time from her hospital bed to tell her version of events.
She said Stinnette was badly wounded and was still breathing after police shot him, but the only help he received from them was a blanket.
'They laid Marcellis on the ground and covered him with a blanket while he was still breathing. I know he was still alive and they took that away from me,' Williams said.
'They allowed him to die. They wanted us to bleed out on the ground,' she said.
'That day, I lost the love of my life and the father of my 7-month-old son. The is the only thing I have left of Marcellis,' she added emotionally.
Williams shared in detail for the first time how she was sitting in her car with Stinnette in front of her home because she did not want to smoke near their seven-month-old son.
She said a white officer pulled up and started to question her.
Family and supporters of Tafara Williams listen as attorney Ben Crump speaks Tuesday
Lake County Black Lives Matter founder Clyde McLemore of Zion leads a protest rally for Marcellis Stinnette who was killed by Waukegan Police in Illinois on October 20
Rayon Edwards speaks on a megaphone as he marches with protesters during a protest rally for Marcellis Stinnette on October 22. The officer who shot Stinnette has been fired
'The officer called Marcellis by name. He asked me, "Was I Tafara?" and told me that I was Marcellis' baby mother. Then he started harassing Marcellis. He stood near the car with his left hand on his gun and he said to Marcellis, "I know you from jail,"' Williams recalled.
Williams said she asked the officer if they could drive away or if they were under arrest.
'The officer took a few steps away from the car and got on his cellphone. I drove away very slowly because I was scared to get out of the car,' she said, noting the cop didn't follow them.
She said a short time later it seemed to her that another officer was 'waiting for us' and a second cop approached their vehicle.
'There was a crash and I lost control. The officer was shooting at us. The car ended up slamming into a building. I kept screaming, "I don't have a gun,"' she said.
'But he kept shooting. He told me to get out of the car. I had my hands up and I couldn't move because I had been shot. Marcellis had his hands up. I kept asking him why, why he was shooting,' she added.
Williams was struck in the abdomen and arm, but is expected to recover.
Williams said Stinnette was shaking uncontrollably when more officers arrived, as per ABC News.
About 100 protesters, including many family members of the shooting victims, marched from the shooting scene to City Hall, making stops at the police station and courthouse on the way
People march during a protest rally for Marcellis Stinnette who was killed by Waukegan Police
Demonstrators denounced violence but demanded accountability in statements along the way
'My blood was gushing out on my body. The officers started yelling. They wouldn't give us an ambulance until we got out of the car. When I moved, blood seemed to pour out of my body on the floor of the car, on the ground, everywhere,' she said.
Williams said she could hear Stinnette breathing and begged the police to take him to the hospital first because he had recently had surgery, but her pleas were ignored.
She recalled begging: 'Please don't shoot. I have a baby, we have a baby. We don't want to die.'
Williams version of events differs from the official record from the Waukegan police.
They have said Williams was driving and Stinnette was a passenger in a vehicle that fled a traffic stop late Tuesday and that the vehicle was later spotted by another officer.
Police say the officer attempted to investigate the car and the vehicle unexpectedly fled the scene.
They said that a short time later the Hispanic officer approached the vehicle and opened fire out of fear for his own safety when the vehicle moved in reverse toward him.
No weapon was found in the vehicle.
Williams' attorneys claim that there was no evidence the couple were engaged in any crime when the shots were fired.
Protests since the incident have been peaceful, and Waukegan has avoided the kind of looting and violence that occurred in nearby Kenosha, Wisconsin, just 15 miles north of Waukegan, after a white police officer shot a black man, Jacob Blake, in the back seven times in August.
Blake survived, but his family has said that he is paralyzed from the waist down.
Yet, Williams told protesters in a telephone call from her hospital bed that she would continue to fight for justice on Stinnette's behalf.
'He didn't deserve it, and they waited for him to die,' she said Saturday on a call that a crowd of protesters heard after her mother put a megaphone to her cellphone.
The FBI and Illinois State Police are conducting an independent investigation into the shooting and will present their findings to Lake County State’s Attorney Michael Nerheim, who will then decide whether to press charges.