A Fort Hood NCO, per the Texas Tribune, has claimed responsibility for shooting Garrett Foster, the 28-year-old US Army vet and devoted fiancee of a black quadruple-amputee woman killed during a July Black Lives Matter march in the Texas Capitol.
The man suspected of killing anti-police brutality protester Garrett Foster in Austin on Saturday has been identified as an active U.S. Army sergeant named Daniel Perry.
Perry’s lawyer also confirmed to The Texas Tribune late Friday that his client wrote tweets that have strengthened activists’ concerns about the shooter’s frame of mind, the validity of his self-defense claim and Austin police officials’ handling of the investigation.
Perry, who is also white, has not been arrested, and has been cooperating and speaking with law enforcement, his lawyer said. Austin police said Friday they could not confirm Perry was the shooter and declined to provide new information about the case. A police spokesperson previously said the shooting is under investigation.
Protesters on the scene told The Texas Tribune that a group surrounded Perry’s car after it hit a traffic cone, and in video from the scene, the sound of a car horn is quickly followed by three gunshots.
Austin PD is apparently going to let Perry go, concurring with his lawyer’s opinion that the ‘ride share driver shot protester in self-defense’ www.cnn.com/... because of a “stand your ground law” and conflicting reports, per Texas Tribune, about whether Foster gestured with his weapon:
Texas’ so-called “stand-your-ground” law allows people to use deadly force against someone else if they feel they are in danger. Conversely, it prohibits an individual from arguing self-defense if they provoked a threat from someone else, said Sam Bassett, an attorney and the president of the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association.
Detectives need to consider whether Foster could have perceived the motorist’s actions as a threat, Bassett told The Texas Tribune.
According to the article about Foster and Mitchell, the Austin cops figure he was to blame for getting killed.
The incident leading up to the 28-year-old’s death began about 9:50 p.m. when a driver honked his horn and turned right onto a street where there was a crowd of protesters, Austin Police Chief Brian Manley said Sunday.
And so, three weeks later, it appears Austin’s cops are going to take no action against US Army SGT Daniel Perry for killing Foster.
That could be unwise:
The driver fired several more shots, (protester and witness to the shooting James) Sasinowski said. "I want to be very clear that the driver incited the violence, he accelerated into the crowd of people and he shot first," he said.
In an interview with
CNN affiliate KEYE, Broden said that Perry "he does take that turn quickly, but this idea that he did that to run protesters down is absurd."
Perry posted social media comments saying he wanted to retaliate against protest participants: www.cnn.com/...
www.victoriaadvocate.com/…
In June, when President Donald Trump tweeted that “protesters, anarchists, agitators, looters or lowlifes” protesting in Oklahoma would face “a much different scene” than protesters in New York or Minneapolis, Perry responded from a now-deleted account with the username “@knivesfromtrigu.” The tweet read, “Send them to Texas we will show them why we say don’t mess with Texas.” That account was identified as being connected to Perry by Tribune of the People, which bills itself as a “revolutionary news service.”
Perry was initially confirmed as the Austin shooter in a press release from his attorney, first posted by KXAN-TV on Friday. The statement said Perry acted in self-defense after he “reasonably perceived a threat to his life” because Foster raised a rifle at him after he unknowingly turned his car into the crowd.
Other witnesses at the scene dispute that Foster raised his weapon and said Perry seemed to use his car to instigate the violence. Vehicles have been used on numerous occasions throughout the country recently as weapons against those demonstrating against police brutality and racial injustice. And doubts over Perry’s self-defense claim have since been amplified by the discovery of his tweets.
Chris Cuomo interviewed a witness, James Sassenowski, from the march:
www.cnn.com/…
That witness says Foster didn’t fire, and that the driver of the car instigated the violence.
The APD police union president claims Garrett was asking for it — although he apologized and took down the tweet later. In that same program, Cuomo ties the APD union boss in knots without half trying. www.facebook.com/...
If you live in Texas you know about Fort Hood and Fort Bliss. You also know that this calendar year has seen tragic resolutions to the cases of at least eight enlisted personnel from Fort Hood.
Here’s a photo of the shooter, provided by his lawyer:
And a TV story about the case: www.kxan.com/...