Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, April 10, 1991 TAG: 9104100554
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: LAURENCE HAMMACK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Caldwell, who was asked to investigate the shooting that prompted complaints from the Roanoke NAACP, announced his findings today after a two-week investigation.
"The bottom line is that I feel the officers acted because they were scared that they would be hurt or killed," Caldwell said. "I just don't think that you can second-guess the officers."
Leonard A. Morris, 27, was shot as many as nine times by two officers after they went to his Southeast Roanoke home the morning of March 23 to investigate a reported attempted rape and malicious wounding. A woman who was stabbed up to 30 times and left on a Walnut Avenue parking lot a short time earlier had identified Morris as her assailant.
In asking for a federal investigation of the shooting, the NAACP raised concerns about the number of shots fired and the fact that some bullet holes were found on the living room floor of Morris' home - suggesting that he may have been shot after he was down.
Caldwell said the number of shots was not unusual, given the tense confrontation that police faced and the short number of seconds that it lasted.
As for the shots that were fired in a downward trajectory, Caldwell said it appeared the officers continued to fire at Morris as he went past them and fell to the floor. But he said he didn't think shots were fired after Morris hit the floor.
While noting that an investigation by the FBI is still under way, Caldwell said he will not pursue charges against the officers involved in the shooting - Sgt. G.C. Hurley and officers D.E. Sink, H.P. McDaniel and J.D. Loope.
The investigation showed that Sink fired six shots and Hurley fired three. An autopsy showed that Morris suffered nine gunshot wounds, but two of them could have been caused by a single bullet.
Police said earlier that they shot Morris after he suddenly became violent during an interrogation - grabbing a steak knife and stabbing McDaniel in the leg, then approaching Sink and Hurley at knifepoint.
At a news conference today, Caldwell said the blade of the knife was found in a trash can near the spot where McDaniel was stabbed.
Although authorities can only speculate, Caldwell said, it's possible the blade broke off when McDaniel was stabbed - meaning that Morris approached the other two officers with only the handle of the knife in his hand.
The handle was found near the wall on the other side of the living room, where Morris fell after he was shot repeatedly.
Even if Morris was unarmed when he was shot, Caldwell said, Hurley and Sink had every reason to believe he was armed and dangerous in the few seconds they had to react.
It also would have been hard to get a good look at the knife, as Morris was moving from a lighted kitchen to a darkened living room where the officers were standing, Caldwell said.
The prosecutor noted that, in making a judgment of the shooting, the law instructs him to view the incident through the eyes of the person being attacked. For a shooting such as this one, the law states that danger need only be apparent and not actual, Caldwell said.
Evangeline Jeffrey, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Roanoke, has raised the "grave possibility" that the shooting was racially motivated.
Caldwell said he has found nothing to support that allegation.
"There's just nothing to indicate that the police were on a vendetta, or that they were particularly upset" with Morris, he said. Morris was black; all of the officers involved in the shooting are white.
Caldwell said none of the officers had been involved in a shooting before, and all are seasoned members of the force. "We're not dealing with somebody fresh out of the police academy," he said.
Although he could have asked for a state police investigation, Caldwell said he was satisfied after talking to a number of witnesses that an outside probe was not needed.
Independent witnesses have supported police accounts of what led up to the shooting. The victim, a 20-year-old Bedford County woman, was able to identify Morris as her assailant and gave a detailed account of what happened.
She said she met the man at a nightclub and later went home with him after she lost track of the friend she was with. Once at the home, they snorted cocaine and Morris began to make sexual advances, she told police.
When she resisted, Morris became angry and chased her when she fled from the house, police said. She was caught a few blocks away, stabbed more than 30 times and apparently left for dead at a parking lot on Walnut Avenue.
by CNB