Henry K. Lee, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
(11-09) 15:43 PST OAKLAND --
Police fatally shot a parolee who had allegedly choked and beaten a woman next door to a hairstylist shop he owned in East Oakland, authorities said Tuesday.
Derrick Jones, 37, was shot Monday night on the 5800 block of Trask Street after he repeatedly reached for his waistband and produced what officers believed was a metal object, Deputy Police Chief Jeff Israel said at a news conference. He declined to say what that object was or whether Jones had been armed.
But family members said Jones had no weapon. They decried what they said was an unjustified killing, comparing it to the 2009 slaying of an unarmed man by then-BART police Officer Johannes Mehserle.
"He cuts hair. He wouldn't hurt a fly," said Jones' cousin, Charles Jones, 35, who was among more than a dozen family members who gathered at Oakland police headquarters to denounce the shooting. "It's outrageous for somebody to just kill him like that."
The incident began when officers responded to reports of a man, whom police identified as Derrick Jones, trying to kill a woman at the Clean Scene laundry on the 5800 block of Bancroft Avenue near Trask.
"This man choked her and struck her repeatedly and slammed her head repeatedly," Israel said.
Relatives of Jones said the woman had previously dated him. Police said the woman had been injured, but they would not elaborate.
When police arrived, Jones fled from the laundry toward Trask, "in an apparent attempt to escape arrest for assaulting the woman," Israel said. Police tried to use a Taser shock weapon to stop him, but it apparently did not make contact with Jones, Israel said.
Two officers found Jones on the 5800 block of Trask and shot and killed him because he repeatedly reached for his waistband and refused to put his hands up, Israel said. At one point, officers saw what they took to be a metal object in his hands, police said.
"This is a move obviously consistent with someone reaching for a weapon," the deputy chief said.
Jones was on parole for a gun conviction and had previous arrests for drug possession and domestic violence, Israel said. Details of his record were not immediately available.
The two officers who shot Jones were placed on paid administrative leave pending investigations by police and the Alameda County district attorney's office. The names of the officers have not been released.
Jones owned and worked as a hairstylist at Kwik Cuts Shop, located next door to the Bancroft Avenue laundry. He often brought his 1-year-old daughter with him to work and would "barbecue almost every day" out front, said a 38-year-old friend and fellow hairstylist who would only give her name as Claraissa.
The two attended their 20th reunion party for Castlemont High School in Oakland in August, she said.
He was a "good father" who was "a very friendly guy," Claraissa said.
"He always had a smile on his face," she said. "He would always make me laugh. I'm heartbroken. I'm upset, and I can't believe that I just saw him and now he's gone."
She added, "I can't believe, with the Oscar Grant thing that's been going on in Oakland, that police would automatically fire. He was unarmed. He should have been Tased, if anything."
Jones' uncle, Sammy Jones, agreed, saying, "We haven't even gotten over Oscar Grant yet, and now here we go again."
A friend of Derrick Jones', Mario Hodge, 37, said, "He didn't carry weapons. He was actually a peace person."
Any suggestion that Jones could have been armed is "a lie," he said. "That would be a slander on his name and the kind of person he is. He's never been that kind of person."
No comments:
Post a Comment