How do you shoot yourself in the chest while handcuffed behind your back?

[Victorian Gray]

The way this plays out could be an educating experience.

The short:

Police claim young African American man shot himself with a hidden gun while he was sitting in the back seat of their car with his hands cuffed behind his back. One small problem, the coroners report says the kid was shot in the chest. The death was still declared a suicide.

The long:

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/investi...youth-shot-himself-death-says-coroner-n185016

 

[mikeymikec]

It's an interesting time to decide to commit suicide as well. A lot of planning must have gone in to ensuring that he had the ability to manipulate his body in the required way and to have a gun ready to do the deed despite presumably being searched by officers before being put in the back of the police car.

 

[ch33zw1z]

According to the report, a second search of White produced the cigars and a small amount of cocaine, and White said both the cocaine and marijuana were his.

so two search didn't produce a handgun?

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

That's incredibly bizarre. I'd like to see a detailed explanation of how this could have happened. "Body habitus"? That's a term without meaning, or at least it's presented without context in the article.

The sad thing is that I don't trust the police nor do I trust the news. The first may be hiding something and the news agencies are sensationalizing and there's not much assurance that effort or understanding is applied.

I suppose the best thing about it is that there is an investigation into what happened and hopefully there will be a proper report properly presented by the media.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

so two search didn't produce a handgun?

Best case is someone really screwed that up. I don't know, but I should think that powder traces would remain and that could indicate whether or not the deceased fired a weapon.

What we need is a better mechanism for review. Internal affairs may or may not do its job, but there's an inherent self interest in sweeping things under the rug and that creates the possibility of conflict of interest.

 

[PokerGuy]

The sad thing is that I don't trust the police nor do I trust the news. The first may be hiding something and the news agencies are sensationalizing and there's not much assurance that effort or understanding is applied.

Exactly. In many of these cases the cops will say and/or do anything to make the case disappear. They'll protect their own, no matter how bad the actions taken might have been. On the flip side, you have sensationalist media that want to blow everything out of proportion and present information from certain angles or out of context to get views/clicks. Makes it really hard to find out what's really going on.

 

[TerryMathews]

The way this plays out could be an educating experience.

The short:

Police claim young African American man shot himself with a hidden gun while he was sitting in the back seat of their car with his hands cuffed behind his back. One small problem, the coroners report says the kid was shot in the chest. The death was still declared a suicide.

The long:

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/investi...youth-shot-himself-death-says-coroner-n185016

Seems pretty clear cut, without some sort of analysis showing he could've gotten his cuffed hands from back to front (some people can) this appears to have been murder.

 

[solsa]

Suicide don't look credible to me.

 

[Londo_Jowo]

Not sure what happened in this case but this in not the first time that a person has been reported to have killed themselves while handcuffed in a police car.

http://nypost.com/2014/01/11/handcuffed-teen-shoots-self-in-back-of-cop-car/

Autopsy: Arkansas Man Shot Himself While Cuffed in Back of Police Car

http://www.salon.com/2012/12/06/another_handcuffed_young_man_manages_to_shoot_himself/

Another handcuffed young man manages to shoot himself

 

[JEDIYoda]

Not sure what happened in this case but this in not the first time that a person has been reported to have killed themselves while handcuffed in a police car.

http://nypost.com/2014/01/11/handcuf...ck-of-cop-car/


Quote:
Autopsy: Arkansas Man Shot Himself While Cuffed in Back of Police Car

http://www.salon.com/2012/12/06/anot...shoot_himself/


Quote:
Another handcuffed young man manages to shoot himself

Both your linked sites question the police side of the story and they question whether the men actually committed suicide...

 

[networkman]

Responding to the thread title: You're a contortionist.

 

[TuSpockShakur]

Maybe the gun was in the floor board of the police cruiser from a previous perp. Said perp got through his cuffing and frisking/lack of frisking and ditched his gun before being undressed and searched at the jail. The dead dude saw it and tried to pick it up with his feet or tried to kick it under the front seat as to not be blamed for it and it discharges.

 

[nehalem256]

Probably by not practicing proper gun safety.

 

[Oldgamer]

They frisked the guy twice before putting him into the police car, his hands were cuffed behind his back and the gun that he was shot with wasn't a standard issued police gun from my understanding. The coroner is now clamming up, and wouldn't give people an explanation as to how someone with their hands behind their back can shoot themselves full on in the front chest. His only comment to reporters was it was due to his habitus corpus body (meaning body build).

Talk about a real cover up! The ME that works with this police department has to be in league with them. The ME wouldn't give the reporters a copy of the full medical report but the family did. They gave them everything. In the report it also said he had scrapes and bruises to the face and none of those injuries were reported in the police incident report. I watched the news last night and they said a lot of what was in the incident report directly contradicted with the police account. The police said in their report that he shot himself in the back too!

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

They frisked the guy twice before putting him into the police car, his hands were cuffed behind his back and the gun that he was shot with wasn't a standard issued police gun from my understanding. The coroner is now clamming up, and wouldn't give people an explanation as to how someone with their hands behind their back can shoot themselves full on in the front chest. His only comment to reporters was it was due to his habitus corpus body (meaning body build).

Talk about a real cover up! The ME that works with this police department has to be in league with them. The ME wouldn't give the reporters a copy of the full medical report but the family did. They gave them everything. In the report it also said he had scrapes and bruises to the face and none of those injuries were reported in the police incident report. I watched the news last night and they said a lot of what was in the incident report directly contradicted with the police account. The police said in their report that he shot himself in the back too!

Egads.

Within hours of White’s death, the Louisiana State Police had assigned investigators to the case.

Due to the pending investigation, records normally considered public are not available. The State Police will not yet release dash cam footage, or the number of or names of any officers present during White’s death. They will not give any timeframe as to when they expect the investigation to conclude.

“You always want to make sure in the end you did whatever you could do possible, that in whatever case you put forward, is the right case, and the outcome is the right outcome,” said Trooper Brooks David, public information officer for the Louisiana State Police. “So if it takes us eight months, or two months, you always want to make sure that you do the right thing.”

The incident is worthy of investigation and doesn't need more ridiculous crap from this poster.

 

[nehalem256]

They frisked the guy twice before putting him into the police car, his hands were cuffed behind his back and the gun that he was shot with wasn't a standard issued police gun from my understanding. The coroner is now clamming up, and wouldn't give people an explanation as to how someone with their hands behind their back can shoot themselves full on in the front chest. His only comment to reporters was it was due to his habitus corpus body (meaning body build).

Which would seem to suggest it wasnt the cops that shot him. Unless cops are in the habit of carrying a 2nd gun in order to execute black people.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Maybe the gun was in the floor board of the police cruiser from a previous perp. Said perp got through his cuffing and frisking/lack of frisking and ditched his gun before being undressed and searched at the jail. The dead dude saw it and tried to pick it up with his feet or tried to kick it under the front seat as to not be blamed for it and it discharges.

floor board? it's not a house.

Cruisers in our area are lined with a hard plastic shell. there's "seats", but not like a regular seat in my car or yours.

there's little room for hiding anything in a cruiser.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Which would seem to suggest it wasnt the cops that shot him. Unless cops are in the habit of carrying a 2nd gun in order to execute black people.

I don't know about "to execute black people". LEO's definitely have privately owned weapons. I'm not outright saying the LEO's actually did it, because we don't really know...and chances are we will never know. But it's highly unlikely that the "suicide" was actually a suicide.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Not sure what happened in this case but this in not the first time that a person has been reported to have killed themselves while handcuffed in a police car.

http://nypost.com/2014/01/11/handcuffed-teen-shoots-self-in-back-of-cop-car/

http://www.salon.com/2012/12/06/another_handcuffed_young_man_manages_to_shoot_himself/

Both are in the head, which I can imagine actually happening. The front of the chest though...much more difficult if not impossible.

 

[trenchfoot]

Well, I guess cop cars are eventually going to have vid cams pointing outward AND inward because of incidents like these, along with the various versions of "damn, the vid cam crapped out just before the incident occurred" that inevitably go along with these kinds of monitoring devices.

 

[Scotteq]

Of Course, it was a Suicide...



Suicide By Cop

 

[werepossum]

Clearly not a suicide. If anything, he might have been trying to get the gun under the seat and it went off. If so, common sense dictates that the shot would have been very low in the right side and upward across the body. Presumably though he would have been carrying a pistol on the left side, where he could easily reach it.

I'm not making any accusations and I don't know if it still occurs in this day of DNA and residue/stippling analysis, but I know used to be cops carried cheap .25 and .32 auto pistols as throw-down pieces. Intention was that if they shot someone who turned out to have been reaching for a wallet or ID, that person would be found with a gun.