Family Of Darryl Ross Disputes STL Police Account Of Shooting

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We pine for the day that cops stop killing Black people but, sadly, today isn’t that day.

A 16-year-old boy named Darryl Ross was gunned down by police in Old North St. Louis and let them tell it, “he deserved it”. According to STLToday, the family of the deceased is outraged at the version of the story that 12 is putting forth.

Officers say that they saw Darryl and others standing outside a gas station with guns when they approached them in plain clothes while wearing bulletproof vests emblazoned with “POLICE” on them. Darryl allegedly ran down an alley, through a fence, and eventually tripped and dropped his gun. Cops say as they got closer to him, he picked up his gun and that’s when they shot him dead.

Here’s the other side of that tall tale.

Jukita Johnson, Darryl’s mother, says she was at the gas station with her son buying food. Johnson says he fled when the men approached because he didn’t know who they were and they never announced themselves as police officers. She says that she only noticed their vests when Darryl was already on the ground shot. She also addressed the idea that Darryl was holding the gun at the time he was shot.

“He never had (the gun) in his hand; he never pulled it out. Because when they turned my baby over, (the gun) was still right here,” Johnson said, tapping her waistband according to STLToday. “They killed my baby, they could have grabbed him … he never pulled (the gun) out.”

The family also questioned why the officers weren’t wearing the equipment that they pay for them to wear.

“Why are they funding them to wear body cameras and they’re not wearing them?” Darryl’s grandfather, Randy Johnson, said Monday. “We taxpayers pay for body cameras, but they don’t have to wear them? That’s not cool.”

We’ve seen enough BS from the police in St. Louis to know that nothing they say can be trusted without independent corroboration. We will be watching this case closely as it moves forward.