Utah Officials report that this man, who they say appeared to be carrying what looked like a samurai sword was shot and killed by Police yesterday. Nothing of course about that is surprising especially when you see what the now deceased young man looked like.
And what could possibly go wrong here? Apparently everything.
http://www.rawstory.com/...
A 911 caller described Hunt as a “suspicious person” who was waving the sword around about 9:40 a.m. in the parking lot of Top Stop Convenience Store.
“He wasn’t talking to anybody at that point,” said Paul Cook, who saw the armed man walking between businesses along a commercial boulevard. “We all kind of thought it was a weird situation. I’m glad that the officers took action because, from what I’ve heard, it could have been a lot worse.”
"Waving the sword around" but if you listen to witness they say it was sheathed and strapped to his back, not in his hands. What's more according to his aunt,
it wasn't even sharpened.
“There’s no blade on it — it’s just a rounded edge,” said Cindy Moss. “It's a decoration from around the house. It’d be like hitting someone with a stick, and they murdered him over it.”
I'd love to say that's unfair to wonder if race, or appearance, wasn't a factor here. I'd love to be able to push that factor aside, but unfortunately since there are no publicly available statistics oh exactly how many times, and on which persons, police use deadly force. And I know, because
I've checked. I can't rule it out.
Shot for walking around with decorative wall furniture.
One witness who saw part of the conversation between Hunt and the Police say that it didn't seem heated, until at one point Hunt ran away and police persued him with their guns drawn.
“They had stopped him, and they were all having a conversation,” said Jocelyn Hansen, who was parked at the gas station. “It didn’t look escalated, or heated at all.”
Hansen said she watched as police questioned Hunt, but just as she turned away, gunfire erupted.
“When I looked up, I saw the young man turning away from the police, and I saw what I thought were two 2×4’s in his hands, one in each hand,” Hansen said. “Then, I saw police officer running after him, and they could have both had guns, but I saw one for sure with his gun extended.”
There are plenty of unanswered questions here. You can see from this picture taken just moments before the shooting that things at this point appear to be calm.
One witness who spoke to the local news say Hunt looked "calm and happy" and even smiled at her, another say he looked "pretty scared" and was walking really fast.
Hunt does have a history of arrest for domestic violence, but no convictions.
Watching the news report videos of this - which wouldn't embed unfortunately so you'll have to follow to two links above - it appears that the press is asking one main question.
"What did Darrien Hunt do to get himself shot?"
So far police seem completely unwilling to offer any type of answer to that question or even a better one since, as it turns out, Darrien wasn't armed with an actual weapon but rather a blunt house decoration, why did police kill him?
We seem to have reached a point where it's just a nonchalant thing for police to stop you of suspicion of "standing with a stick" and that if you run, you deserve to get shot.
There's a lot of questions here. How exactly did Darrien pose a threat to the Officers or the public with a blunt stick, or possibly "a 2x4 in each hand" that Officers were completely helpless to address without use of deadly force?
If the guys who shot him down didn't have badges, wouldn't they be in custody right now until there was a good explanation for why the killed someone?
If Darrien had looked a little different, would anyone have even bothered to call 9-1-1? [Remember when Jerod Miller and his shopping cart full of ammo went down the street without raising any kind of alarm? No one called 9-1-1 until he and his wife shot two cops.]
Utah, as other cases have brought out, has an Open Carry Law, so if Hunt had had an actual AR-15 that would have been perfectly legal, but a unsharpened stick in a sheath? Why that's just too much, isn't it?
Why does it seem that guns are the first, second, third and sometimes the twentieth option for police to rely on, even when the other person doesn't have a gun at all?
Why doesn't this seem to shock and surprise us that much anymore?
Vyan