New York Daily News – by Christopher Brennan
The Louisiana officer who killed a 6-year-old autistic child said that he fired shots at the boy’s father in self-defense.
Derrick Stafford, a deputy city marshal in Marksville, has asked a judge to throw out the second-degree murder charge for shooting Jeremy Mardis last November.
Both Stafford and deputy Norris Greenhouse Jr. said that they did not know that the child was in the front seat before opening fire.
Prosecutors say that body camera video of the shooting shows Mardis’s father Christopher Few raising his hands and the officers ignoring his plea for police not to shoot.
Lawyers for Stafford said that the father had refused to commands to stop, rammed Greenhouse’s car and had backed towards police again when their client shot “out of fear for his life and that of his fellow officers.”
They added that the beginning of the video, which has not been made public, does not have audio and it is not clear whether Few raised his hands before or after the officers began shooting.
Both Stafford and deputy Norris Greenhouse Jr. said that they did not know that the child was in the front seat before opening fire.
Few survived the shooting, where 14 shell casings from Stafford and five from Greenhouse were found.
His son was hit four times and did not.
Prosecutors have argued that Stafford, also a Marksville police lieutenant, including two incidents of using a stun gun on two people who were already secured in 2011 and breaking a 16-year-old girl’s arm when breaking up a school bus fight in 2012.
He is set to go on trial in November, with Greenhouse’s case set for March.
With News Wire Services
Another psychotic cop, another dead kid, and of course, it’s always in “self-defense”.
It looks to me like they’re afraid of anything that moves.
Wait for the claim that the child’s seat looks like he had a gun as an after the fact reason. They did not know the child was in the car until it means something to them needing it.
Gee… If you can’t even handle a six year old, then there’s definitely something wrong with you. Just sayin.
“said that they did not know that the child was in the front seat before opening fire. ”
#1 rule of shooting a gun.. Know what is in the vicinity of your target before pulling trigger and whats beyond it
YOU FAIL !!officer Dumbfu^k you FAIL 14 dam times!
really you shot 14 times? dude get a job cleaning up portable toilets you cant be a cop
put him in a box for life
“… shot “out of fear for his life and that of his fellow officers.”
Reciprocation will be based on that very same premise.
However, in our case it will be absolutely true.