Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 11, 1991 TAG: 9104110288
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Caldwell, who was asked to investigate the shooting that prompted complaints from the Roanoke NAACP, announced his findings after a three-week review.
"The bottom line is that I feel the officers acted because they were scared that they would be hurt or killed," Caldwell said. "I just don't think that you can second-guess the officers."
Leonard A. Morris, 27, was shot as many as nine times by two officers who went to his Southeast Roanoke home the morning of March 23. Police wanted to question Morris about a woman who was sexually attacked, stabbed repeatedly and left on a nearby street corner, but they said they were forced to draw their revolvers after he turned violent.
In the words of one officer, Morris was shot after he began acting like a "madman" - stabbing one officer with a steak knife and charging two others.
In asking for a federal investigation of the shooting, the NAACP raised concerns about the number of shots fired and the fact that some bullet holes were found on the living-room floor of Morris' home, suggesting that he may have been shot after he was down.
Caldwell said the number of shots was not unusual, given the tense confrontation that police faced in the few seconds they had to react.
As for the shots that were fired downward, Caldwell said it appeared the officers continued to fire at Morris as he lunged past them in a crouched position and fell to the floor.
But he said he did not think shots were fired after Morris hit the floor, and that the shots to his back were part of an instant reaction. Caldwell estimated that it took just three seconds for police to fire nine shots.
Although noting that an investigation by the FBI is still under way, Caldwell said he will not pursue charges against the officers involved in the shooting - Sgt. G.C. Hurley and Officers D.E. Sink, H.P. McDaniel and J.D. Loope.
The investigation showed that Sink fired six shots and Hurley fired three after McDaniel was stabbed. According to an autopsy, Morris suffered nine .38-caliber gunshot wounds, although two of them could have been caused by a single bullet.
Three of the shots - two to Morris' back and one to his thigh - appeared to have been fired from behind him. Other gunshots included two wounds in his chest, a grazing shot to his head, a wound in his shoulder, another thigh wound and a nick to his left index finger.
Police said earlier that officers shot Morris after he lunged at them with a knife extended. But according to Caldwell's investigation, it may not have happened exactly that way.
At a news conference Wednesday, Caldwell said the blade of the knife was found in a trash can near the spot where McDaniel was stabbed.
Although authorities can only speculate, Caldwell said, it is possible the blade broke off when McDaniel was stabbed - meaning that Morris approached Hurley and Sink with only the handle of the knife in his hand.
The handle was found near the wall on the other side of the living room, where Morris fell after he was shot.
But even if Morris was unarmed when he was shot, Caldwell said, Hurley and Sink had every reason to believe he was armed and dangerous.
It also would have been difficult to get a good look at the knife, as Morris was moving from a lighted kitchen to a darkened living room where the officers were standing, Caldwell said.
The prosecutor noted that, in making a judgment of the shooting, the law instructs him to view the incident through the eyes of the person being attacked. For a shooting such as this one, the law states that danger need only be apparent and not actual, Caldwell said.
Evangeline Jeffrey, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Roanoke, has raised the "grave possibility" that the shooting was racially motivated.
Caldwell said he found nothing to support that allegation.
"There's just nothing to indicate that the police were on a vendetta, or that they were particularly upset" with Morris, he said. Morris was black; all of the officers involved in the shooting are white.
Caldwell said none of the officers had been involved in a shooting before, and all are seasoned members of the force. "We're not dealing with somebody fresh out of the police academy," he said.
Police Chief M. David Hooper said Wednesday that he is pleased with Caldwell's investigation, and that his finding was "consistent with the facts."
Although Caldwell explored the legal consequences of the shooting, Hooper said a separate investigation by police will examine issues of departmental procedure. That probe should be completed shortly, he said.
Caldwell could have asked for a state police investigation, but said he was satisfied after talking to a number of witnesses that an outside probe was not needed.
Independent witnesses have supported police accounts of what led up to the shooting. Morris' victim, a 20-year-old Bedford County woman, was able to identify him as her assailant and gave a detailed account of what happened.
She said she met Morris at a nightclub and later went home with him after she lost track of a friend she was with. Once at the home, she and Morris snorted cocaine and Morris made sexual advances, she told police.
When she resisted, Morris became angry and chased her when she fled from the house, police said. She was caught a few blocks away, stabbed more than 30 times and apparently left for dead at a parking lot on Walnut Avenue.
Caldwell said authorities can only guess why Morris, who at first was polite to the police officers, suddenly turned violent after blood was found on his clothes.
"I don't know what motivated him," Caldwell said, "but it's safe to speculate that he felt that he had killed a woman."
by CNB