On the morning of October 16, 2023, Leonard Cure was pulled over while driving through Camden County, Ga. According to dash camera footage released following the incident, Officer Buck Aldridge ordered Cure to exit his vehicle to which he complied. However, while Cure and Aldridge went back and forth with questions, the officer tried to grab his arm to arrest him and Cure snatched his arm away. In the video, Cure was then ordered to put his hands on the vehicle which he did.
However, he appeared to refuse to place his hands behind his back, leading the officer to shock him with a Taser at point-blank range in the back. According to the footage, the two got into a scuffle and wrested to the ground. Aldridge then shot Cure in the chest.
He died then and there. He had just received monetary compensation for spending 20 years in prison after being exonerated in 2020. Twenty years incarcerated for a crime he did not commit.
Benjamin Crump and attorney Harry Daniels are arguing the sheriff’s department knew that Aldridge had a problem with “unsupervised violent behavior.” And they have receipts!
“On May 21, 2018, Defendant Jim Proctor hired Defendant Aldridge as a deputy at the Camden County Sheriff’s Office. At the time Defendant Proctor hired Defendant Aldridge, Defendant Proctor knew or should have known that Defendant Aldridge had a propensity for violence and had a history of using unlawful force and excessive force while on duty as a law enforcement officer.” (From the suit.)
Leonard Cure’s family is asking for $17 million in damages and a trial by jury.
But dead is dead.
IN OTHER KINDA GOOD NEWS…
Paramedic convicted in Elijah McClain’s death sentenced to 5 years in prison!
What??? Five years later??? A real sentence???
One of the two paramedics convicted of criminally negligent homicide in the 2019 death of Elijah McClain, the 23-year-old Black man detained by police and injected with ketamine, was sentenced Friday in a Colorado courtroom to five years in prison, the minimum.
Peter Cichuniec was found guilty of criminally negligent homicide and second-degree assault in December. His co-defendant, Jeremy Cooper, also was convicted of criminally negligent homicide and is scheduled to be sentenced April 26.
I written five or six diaries about Elijah McClain’s murder. I think we all know that this gentle, loving young man never deserved to be mobbed and tortured to death. It is sickening to know that the consequences have been so mild for the killers that the paramedic who went along with the fun getting a 5 year prison sentence is good news. But there it is.
In closing arguments, state Solicitor General Shannon Stevenson painted a callous picture of the 14 minutes Cichuniec and Cooper were on the scene while McClain was pinned to the ground and handcuffed by police officers before he lost his pulse in the ambulance.
“Here was their plan, ‘we’re going to leave that person on the ground … we’re not going to touch them, not with a single finger. We’re not going to get a single piece of equipment out of our bag,’” Stevenson said. “We’re not going to put our faces near his face. We’re not going to ask one question about what happened to him. We’re not going to listen to what he is trying to say to us.”
www.cpr.org/...
After McClain was given a large dose of ketamine by paramedics, body worn camera footage showed that the paramedics didn’t immediately tend to McClain at all. One officer slapped him to make sure he was fully unconscious. (The other paramedic will be sentenced in April.)
Colorado AG Phil Weiser said the sentence “sends a strong message that no profession, whether a paramedic, a nurse, a police officer, an elected official, or a CEO should be immune from criminal prosecution for actions that violate the law and harm people.”
Elijah McClain’s mother, Sheneen McClain, in testimony before the sentence was handed down by Judge Mark Warner, said she once dreamed of being a firefighter and considered them heroes “until the day they took my son's life.”
Not a good day for her. Cause dead is dead.
And her son is dead.
Justice delayed is justice denied.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.