Vonderrit, without a gun, buying a sandwich moments before being killed by St. Louis Police
On October 8, 2014, VonDerrit Myers, who was beloved by his family and community, was shot and killed by off-duty St. Louis Police Officer Jason Flanery, who was working as a paid private patrolman. For the past year since Myers was murdered, nobody in the community has felt like the official police story added up. Two days after he was killed, I concluded the same thing
in a thorough breakdown of his last hour alive.
Yesterday, writers for the St. Louis American broke a very important story that may truly provide some extra insight into what could've happened on October 8 in the police shooting death of Myers.
On September 23, a St. Louis city jury acquitted 20-year-old Keyon Bennett, who is black, of all four felony charges for which he was charged, based on the testimony of a white city police officer. The jury did not believe that on June 11, 2014 Bennett pointed a gun at Officer James Zwilling before he fired one or possibly more shots at Bennett in the Greater Ville neighborhood. They did not believe that Bennett was carrying a gun at all, as Zwilling testified.
The other officer who assisted Zwilling that day was Officer Jason Flanery, who shot and killed VonDerrit Myers Jr. less than four months later while working private security in the Shaw neighborhood on October 8, 2014.
Let me translate that for those of you that may not be living and breathing this case.
A young brother named Keyon Bennett was arrested on four felony counts stemming from aiming and firing a weapon at a St. Louis Police officer, but when it went to court last week, the jury flat out concluded that the officer made the whole damn thing up and dropped all of the charges.
All by itself, that is newsworthy. That never happens. In fact, I can't recall another instance where this has happened.
All things considered, prosecutors should now press charges against Officer James Zwilling—but that's not really how St. Louis rolls. They literally have a corrupt cop as their spokesperson.
Now, this becomes extremely relevant for Myers because the man who killed him, Jason Flanery, was with Officer James Zwilling when he basically attempted to frame Keyon Bennett.
It's doubly relevant because what the jury believed Officer James Zwilling was lying about is almost completely identical to the story Jason Flanery gave for why he chased, shot, and killed Vonderrit Myers. It's uncanny how similar the stories are.
If Zwilling was willing to frame an innocent man and Flanery went along with it, it's not illogical that Flanery would be willing to pull this mess on his own as well.
Myers, 18, had just purchased a sandwich with his friends from the local Shaw Market on the night he was shot and killed. In an interview with Matt Pearce of the Los Angeles Times, the manager of the market, Berhe Beyet, said:
Like six minutes after I sold him a sandwich, he got shot... He wasn't armed when he was here. He didn't have a hoodie.
This observation from the store manager is confirmed by the still images and recently released video of Myers and two of his friends taken just minutes before he was killed. It raises a series of questions about exactly what transpired between the time Myers purchased a sandwich, not wearing a hoodie, and then got shot at 17 times by a St. Louis police officer just minutes late—in possession of a gun and wearing a hoodie.
This is essential because jurors in the case of Keyon Bennett believed that police may have planted a gun on him.
Below the fold is the video from the Shaw Market.
Just about 10 miles away from where Mike Brown was killed by Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri two months earlier, the police, just as they did in the aftermath of the Mike Brown killing, have revealed many factual errors in their narrative of the incident and have since changed their story of what happened, time after time after time. What follows is an account of these changes.
Less than two hours after the killing of Myers, the police, on their Twitter account, gave the following account. Please notice how they say that the "suspect," while fleeing, turned and fired at the officer.
Later that evening, Lt. Col. Alfred Adkins of the St. Louis Police Department
gave this account to Gawker:
The man the officer was chasing jumped from some bushes and struggled with the officer, Adkins said. The man then pulled a gun and fired at the officer, Adkins said. The officer returned fire and fatally shot the man.
Shortly thereafter, he adds
more details to his account of the shooting:
"As [the officer] exited the car, the gentlemen took off running. He was able to follow one of them before he lost him and then found him again as the guy jumped out of some bushes across the street," Lt. Col. Alfred Adkins said. "The officer approached, they got into a struggle, they ended up into a gangway, at which time the young man pulled a weapon and shots were fired. The officer returned fire and unfortunately the young man was killed."
Notice in the account from Atkins that Myers is hiding behind some bushes on the scene and jumps out? One major problem exists with this:
Following the recognition that no bushes exist on the scene, police, the following day, completely removed any mention of Myers hiding behind them from
their recounting of that evening. But, in this statement, they still claim that Myers "turned" and began shooting at the officer:
An officer working department-approved secondary for a security company, wearing a St. Louis Police Officer’s uniform was in the 4100 block of Shaw when he attempted a pedestrian check. The male suspect fled on foot. The officer pursued the suspect. The suspect turned and fired a gun at the officer. Fearing for his safety, the officer returned fire striking the suspect, fatally wounding him. The officer was not injured. A gun was recovered from the scene. The officer is a 32-year-old white male. He has been on the force for 6 years. The suspect is a black male believed to be 18-20 years old. As is department policy, the officer has been placed on administrative leave. The investigation is ongoing.
Holding a press conference about 24 hours after the shooting of Myers, Chief Sam Dotson described the night's events as follows, according to the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
The officer followed one of the young men, identified as Myers, into a gangway. He was running and holding his waistband in a way that caused the officer to suspect he had a gun. Myers turned and approached the officer in "an aggressive manner and the officer told Myers to surrender. Myers continued to come at the officer and the two struggled. A sweatshirt the man was wearing came off during the struggle.
When did Myers put on this sweatshirt? He is not wearing it inside the store and does not put it on when he leaves the store and begins to walk away on foot. Also, if you watch the video, you can clearly see that Myers is sagging his jeans. It is common, with this style, to have to hold jeans up when running and is far from being indicative that someone possesses a firearm.
About 72 hours after the shooting of Myers, a spokesperson for the police, in addition to completely removing the bush from their narrative, now claims that Myers "fell" and began shooting at the officer from the ground. This is an enormous shift in the story that the police have told for the previous three days.
Furthermore, it is worth noting that the spokesperson for the St. Louis police union, Jeff Roorda,
already chiming in on this case, was himself
fired as a police officer for falsifying reports and has admitted that he is behind the fundraiser for Darren Wilson.