For the NNPA
DETROIT (NNPA) — Like millions of others across the country on Thanksgiving weekend, 16-year-old Brandon Burks, a straight-A student at Osborne High School, went out to shop with his friends on the afternoon of Nov. 26.
But Brandon never came home.
An off-duty Detroit police officer, moonlighting on security duty at the National Wholesale Liquidators store in the Bel-Air mall on Detroit’s east side, shot him once in the back as Brandon ran from him. The bullet pierced his heart.
Brandon was one of two men to die at the hands of Detroit police Thanksgiving weekend.
“It was wrong,” said Brandon’s grieving brother Hoisea Jackson, 14. “They were kids. If you were a grown-up, you could have talked to him so you could go talk to his parents, but no, he wanted to get a gun and shoot at kids. That is so wrong.”
Brandon’s 14-year-old friend Johnathan Stanley, also an Osborne student, was shot in the hand by the cop, an injury that could end his budding football career.
At press time, Brandon’s 19-year-old brother John Henry Moore, Jr. remained jailed, held without charges, unable to be with his family as they prepared for his brother’s funeral. State law requires the arraignment or release of individuals within 48 hours of arrest.
“In Sunday’s New York Times, there is a front-page story about a young man killed on his wedding day by an off-duty cop,” said attorney Geoffrey Feiger, who has been retained by Brandon’s family.
“That happened in Detroit on Sunday,” Fieger went on. “A young man went out with his friends, and for no other reason than a store policy barring 16-year-olds from shopping there, he was executed in Detroit. But there has been no uproar, no controversy. Instead there is a cover-up. We are pressing for murder charges to be brought. The leaders of this city, Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy, must step forward.”
At Fieger’s office Nov. 28, Johnathan Stanley and Laron Hundley, 16, recounted the details of that nightmarish afternoon.
They said that the group of seven young friends had split up once they got to the store around 2 p.m., with John Moore and Hundley going to the electronics section to shop for games.
Stanley said that his group was followed by undercover cops and eventually ejected from the store. Hundley said that he and Moore saw their friends leaving, and also went out, but realized that another friend was still in the store.
“I tried to go back in the store to get Keith,” said Hundley, “but the guard pushed me and started fighting. I got a bruise on my eye. In the middle of this, his gun fell out, he reached for it, and everybody started running.”
Stanley said he ran to duck behind his car after he was shot in the hand.
“Brandon was running,” he said. “I heard two more shots, and then I saw Brandon fall.”
When police cars arrived at the scene, the entire group except Stanley, who was sent to the hospital, were hauled off to jail.
“As soon as they pulled up, they came out with their guns out,” said Hundley. “I asked what about this dead body here, and they said don’t worry about it, just worry about what’s going to happen to you.”
All of the young men except Moore were later released without charges. At press time, Maria Miller, spokesperson for Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy, said the Police Department had submitted a warrant to charge Moore, but that an investigation by their office would “take some time.” She said she expected Moore would be released pending further investigation.
Second Deputy Chief James Tait, spokesperson for the Detroit Police Department, said, “The six males between the ages of 16 and 22 were being unruly. They were asked to leave, and initially refused to do so, then they complied. That’s when they and the off-duty officer encountered each other. Words were exchanged, and one individual took off his jacket and rushed toward the officer and got in a tussle. The other males also joined. That’s when the officer’s weapon discharged, striking two young men. It’s still unclear on who pulled the trigger.”
DPD Sgt. Omar Feliciano said the department is not releasing the name of the officer.
National representatives of the National Wholesale Liquidators chain were not able to be contacted. The store’s manager, who would not give his name, would not comment or allow interviews of his workers.
Susie Burks, Brandon’s mother, said a doctor at St. John’s Hospital told her that Brandon had been shot in the back, with the bullet entering his heart.
She said he was the second youngest of seven children. She said he was a straight A student at Osborne, and had received trophies and awards. He planned to go to college away from Detroit when he graduated.
“My son was going to be somebody,” she said. “Those kids are all good kids, they don’t get in any trouble. Everybody knew them. Most of the time, wherever I went, they went with me.”
Burks, who works as a housekeeper, said that since her son’s death, police have treated her rudely as she tried to get information on her son’s killing, and information on Moore’s arrest and terms of his release. An attorney for Fieger’s firm was seeking his release at press time.
Burks said that while she was gone from the family’s home Nov. 28, a man wearing a security guard hat drove by the house and fired a gun in the air.
“I’m burying my baby, and trying to hold myself together, but now this harassment is going on,” she said.
Brandon’s father John Moore, Sr. said, “I’m devastated. The police department wants us to honor and respect them, then they go and do this. What are we paying them for, to kill us?”
Johnathan Stanley’s mother Chrissie Stanley said her son is being scouted by colleges across the country. She said he was on the way to a banquet where he was supposed to receive two football trophies when his friends came to the house to get him to go shopping.
“But he wasn’t at the banquet, he was locked up,” said Stanley. “These parents lost their son, but the police are interrogating and harassing these kids instead of interrogating the man that killed this child and wounded my son.”
Johnathan’s stepfather, Sharife Barnes, said he has worked for seven years as a security guard, and that there was no justification for how the officer handled the situation.
Also on Thanksgiving weekend, two undercover police officers chased and shot to death another man, who had allegedly robbed a Family Dollar store on McNichols and Greenlawn.
In published reports, police representatives said the man, who was fleeing on foot, fired once at their car as they pursued him from McNichols to Puritan, at least 8 blocks away. However, neighbors at Puritan and Greenlawn said they heard a volley of at least 18 gunshots at that intersection when the chase concluded.
A parent from the nearby Bates Academy said the store had been robbed in September, and that police had been prepared this time.
Detroit police have killed several others this year. They included a man who was shot multiple times at Marcus and Milner Sept. 5 after police stopped him in a car with an alleged prostitute, and another man who was killed July 5 after police fired at him seven times. Police claimed he pointed a gun at them while walking on the street.
Funeral services for Brandon Burks were held Tuesday at the O.C. Pye Funeral Home on Plymouth near Southfield. His family may be contacted through attorney Geoffrey Fieger at 1-248-355-5555.