Mother Demands Answers After Teen Son Shot, Wounded By Louisiana Police
A Louisiana mother is seeking justice in the shooting of her 14-year-old son, who was wounded by a deputy with the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office.
According to NBC News, the Sheriff’s Office did not disclose that the teen had been injured at the hands of one of its officers until Sheriff Joe Lopinto was asked about it at a news conference in June and even then very little was revealed.
On March 20, Tre’Mall McGee was hanging out with friends when another friend picked them up in a Nisaan Maxima. McGee says he didn’t know the car was stolen. As the group drove along through Westwego, La., they were pulled over by police. The driver sped off, but was chased by deputies, and then suddenly stopped. McGee and the others jumped out of the vehicle and ran. McGee tried to crawl under a shed in a backyard, but was caught by an officer.
By the time his mother, Tiffany McGee arrived at the hospital, she assumed he had been the victim of street violence and had no idea it had been an officer’s bullet that wounded her son. She called the father of one of the friends who had been with her son that day. Together they used phone tracing technology and tracked her son’s phone to the Westwego Police Department. It’s then that she learned that he had been shot by the police.
After picking up her son the next morning from juvenile lockup and confirming with him that a copy had shot him, McGee next went to the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office, internal affairs and the FBI, to find out why her son had been hurt, but got nowhere. "I've called everyone I needed to call, but I'm not getting any answers," she said. "I'm getting the complete runaround."
On May 27, she went back to the Sheriff’s Office but was told they knew nothing about the shooting. "My son has a bullet wound that's never going to go away. At 14 years old,” she said to the head of the shooting squad. “My son was shot by an officer."
After she continued to press the agency, she was finally contacted by a detective, Steven Bradley, who told her to bring Tre’Mall in to make a statement, which she did the next day.
Two weeks later she received a summons charging the teen with “resisting by flight.”
"Before, you all didn't know nothing [sic] about the shooting," she said. "Now you guys want to try to charge him?"
At a June 24 press conference, Sheriff Lopinto was speaking about another police involved shooting involving Modesto Reyes, who was killed by Jefferson Parish deputies two days before. When asked about Tre’Mall McGee’s case, which had been mentioned in local media, Lopinto said the shooting happened just as the coronavirus pandemic was taking most of the force’s attention.
"There's nothing that was hidden," he said. Lopinto. "It wasn't something that was on my mind back then."
Christopher Murell, an attorney representing the McGees told NBC News, that the office did investigate and said officers believed the shooting was justifiable because they thought Tre’Mell was holding a weapon when he raised his arm to surrender, although it was determined that he was unarmed.
"They are attempting to say that the officer said his life felt threatened because a child raised his hand," said Murell.
Tre’Mall McGee will turn 15-years old next month and his case is still pending. He still has bullet fragments in his arm. His lawyers say the district attorney is taking a new look at the charges. Meanwhile his mother still wants the Sheriff’s Office to be held responsible for hurting her boy.
"I'm fighting just to get you to be accountable for what you did," Tiffany McGee said. "Just take responsibility. That's all I want you to do."
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