On Aug. 19, 2015, one year and 10 days after police fatally shot Mike Brown in Ferguson, another 18-year-old, Mansur Ball-Bey, was fatally shot by St. Louis police officers in the Fountain Park area.
On Jan. 31, nearly a decade after the shooting and following a five-day trial, a jury awarded the Ball-Bey family almost $19 million for Mansur’s death.
So far, not a single dollar has been paid.
Family lawyers told The American they fear the Spencer administration will appeal the decision, which would further delay any payout to the Ball-Bey family.
Last week Mansur‘s father, Dennis Ball-Bey, and two family lawyers — John Waldron and Jermaine Wooten — sat down with The American. Ball-Bey re-lived the agony that he, his wife and children endured after learning what happened to his son, both on the streets and in court, starting on that fateful day in August 2015.
A little before noon, while working his job as a sanitation worker for a food and beverage company, Dennis Ball-Bey received an urgent phone call from a relative. She told him police had shot his son, Mansur, near a cousin’s house. She didn’t know if he was dead or alive, only that he’d been taken away in an ambulance.
Ball-Bey quickly drove to the scene, describing it as “chaos.” A crowd engulfed him, shouting, “The police done shot …” and “They murdered your son.” But Mansur was no longer there.
Ball-Bey drove to the closest hospital, Barnes-Jewish, where he was told no one matching his son’s description had been admitted. At the police department, officers gave their version of events: Mansur pointed a gun at police and ran before they opened fire, killing him instantly.
He was then sent to the morgue, where relatives and members of his faith, the Moorish Science Temple of America, had gathered. There, Ball-Bey identified his son’s body and called his wife to tell her they had lost one of their four children.
Ball-Bey said he assumed the outcome of the tragedy would favor police. They told the press that a special operations unit had invaded a home near Page Boulevard and Walton Avenue searching for drugs and weapons. Mansur and a 14-year-old friend fled from the back of the house into an alley, and Mansur pointed a gun at officers. Preliminary autopsy results showed that Mansur died from a gunshot wound to the back, which confirmed for the family that he was running from police.
None of that story aligned with Ball-Bey’s memory of his son, who had gotten a job at FedEx after graduating high school, who attended temple three days a week and who was trying to “break into the music industry.” In fact, days after Mansur’s death, a package containing instruments his son had ordered arrived at Ball-Bey’s home
Ball-Bey’s niece had contacted attorney Wooten who, days after the shooting, had already started de-constructing the police version of events. He convinced the mother of Mansur’s 14-year-old friend to have her son make a statement to police and the circuit attorney’s office.
The boy said neither he nor Mansur were inside the house when police served the search warrant. He said two men “with guns,” who didn’t identify themselves as police, approached them in an alley behind the house — which belonged to Mansur’s aunt — and they took off running.
Wooten pointed to inconsistencies in the story and said that during such raids, a “tactical team” would be stationed at the back door to ensure the safety of the officers inside. “Mansur would have never gotten past the back porch — especially armed — if he was inside the house,” Wooten said.
Also, the bullet severed Mansur’s spine and went straight through an artery leading to the heart, which meant Mansur died instantly and it would have been “impossible” for him to run two lots away, as police claimed, after being shot, Wooten said.
This year, the case finally made it to federal court. In less than 90 minutes, an all-white jury returned with a judgment favoring Ball-Bey, who had sued Officer Kyle Chandler, whom jurors believed had unjustly taken his son’s life.
Jurors awarded the family $6.25 million for the loss of Mansur, plus another $12.5 million to punish the city based on evidence against Officer Chandler.
“The officer had lied before; he had killed another man in a very similar manner as Mansur,” Waldron said. “The jury heard all this evidence, and that’s why they awarded an additional $12 million.”
Ball-Bey was happy with the judgment but said his feelings weren’t necessarily about the money.
“I didn’t even dwell on what they had awarded me,” he said. “I just felt good that Mansur’s name was cleared and they had found the police to be corrupt. I didn’t even trip off the money.”
Ball-Bey has learned that winning a favorable judgment and actually receiving the cash from that judgment are two different things.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that next year’s proposed city budget allocates $10.3 million to a “judgment fund,” which already receives $6 million annually from elsewhere in the budget.
The city counselor’s office under former Mayor Tishaura Jones had indicated plans to appeal Ball-Bey’s case. In response to a question from The American, Mayor Cara Spencer’s spokesman, Rasmus S. Jorgensen, said the city had filed “post-trial motions” but could not comment further on pending litigation.
The decision to pay the award should be easy, Waldron said.
“They could have paid Dennis the morning after the verdict, and they’d be done with it. But instead, they continue to drag it out while every month that goes by another $60,000 in interest accrues for the city.”
The money doesn’t have to be paid in one lump sum, Waldron added. He has seen such judgments spread over several fiscal years.
Wooten said the main issue they want to convey to Spencer is that “this family has waited 10 years for justice.” While the Jan. 31 judgment addressed part of that, he added, “Now it’s time for the city to fulfill its obligation and pay this family so they can get some real closure for this tragedy.”
Although the unprecedented judgment isn’t Ball-Bey’s main concern, any delay or withholding of payment is, in itself, another form of injustice, he said.
“The jury has awarded me this, but now we have a problem getting the award. So, we still have to wait after waiting 10 years. … We’re still at a standstill. For me, it’s still about injustice.”
Sylvester Brown Jr. is the Deaconess Foundation Community Advocacy Fellow.