Delaware: Police officers fatally shot a man in wheelchair after responding to a call that he had a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The police chief in Wilmington, Delaware, defended his officers on Thursday. The handicapped man, Jeremy McDole, was armed with a .38-caliber gun – the same one he'd apparently used on himself earlier, Chief Bobby Cummings said. And he never complied with the officers' requests.
Instead, "when McDole began to remove the weapon from his waist, the officers engaged him," Cummings said. In other words, the officers opened fire because they were concerned McDole might fire his weapon at them.
But the man's mother saw it differently.
Phyllis McDole alluded to a video – which Cummings acknowledged but said he hasn't authenticated – which she said shows that her son "didn't pull a weapon. He had his hands in his lap."
In the footage, a witness can be heard saying "put your hands up" and "he's reaching again." But it's not obvious what exactly the man was doing with his hands just before the shots rang out.
Phyllis McDole – who spoke at the same news conference as Cummings, despite their obvious differences of opinion – doesn't understand why her son died. He was 28-years-old and paralysed from the waist down, she points out.
The mother said, "This is unjust."
Mayor Dennis Williams promised at Thursday's news conference that the family "will be notified step-by-step throughout the investigation.
And he concurred with Phyllis McDole in at least one respect: "We want answers."
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