No charges will be brought against the two police officers involved in the fatal shooting death of Mansur Ball-Bey on August 19, 2015 in Fountain Park, Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce told Ball-Bey’s family on Thursday, June 2.
St. Louis Police Commissioner Sam Dotson then released a statement that named the two officers involved in the incident. Police Officer Kyle Chandler fired the fatal shot, and Police Officer Ronald Vaughan also fired his weapon but did not strike Ball-Bey. Months ago, the protest community correctly named these officers, who were suspected of planting drugs on an individual during an arrest in 2013.
Ball-Bey’s death incited protests, where heavily armed police deployed tear gas into the residential West End neighborhood. Joyce launched an independent investigation into the case soon after the incident.
Attorneys representing Ball-Bey’s family argued that Ball-Bey was an innocent bystander who happened to be nearby when police executed a search warrant for drugs and weapons at 1211 Walton Ave. on August 19 – and claimed he was not carrying a gun. The raid ended in Ball-Bey’s death on the front lawn of 1233 Walton Ave.
Grand Sheik Todd Irons-El of the Moorish Science Temple of America spoke on behalf of Ball-Bey’s family at a press conference following their meeting with Joyce.
“The prosecuting attorney has charged people with less evidence than there was in this case,” Irons-El said. “We are very disappointing the she did not bring charges against these officers.”
Attorney Jermaine Wooten said he believes Chandler and Vaughan were guilty of planting evidence, as they have been accused of doing in the past. Police found three guns at the scene. One of those guns closely matched a gun that Ball-Bey posed with in photographs and a video posted on social media. Police said they found Ball-Bey’s fingerprints on the gun.
“Mansur had just come from his job at Fed-Ex,” attorney Jerryl Christmas previously said. “Why would he have a gun?”
Records from Federal Express show that Ball-Bey had not been to work for at least 24 hours prior to the shooting, the report stated.
“Of those three guns, they took one of them and planted it on Mansur,” Wooten said. Even if Ball-Bey had possessed it in the past, Wooten claimed, he didn’t have it on him that day.
In the Joyce’s report, she acknowledged the discrepancies between law enforcement accounts, which stated that Ball-Bey fled from the house where the warrant was served holding a gun that he flashed at police, and a civilian account, which stated that the youth was not in the building and was not armed.
The crucial point, she said, is that the civilian – a 14-year-old friend of Ball-Bey – did not have a clear view of the moment he was shot and therefore would not be a credible witness to undermine the police officers’ claim of self-defense.
The young witness told investigators he had never handled a gun, but is show on social media brandishing heavy weapons in both hands with guns shoved in both front pockets.
“When a person claims self-defense, the burden of proof rests with the prosecution to prove that the shooter did not fear for his safety or the safety of others,” Joyce writes.
On August 21, the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department’s preliminary autopsy results showed that Ball-Bey died from a gunshot wound in the back. Many felt this confirmed that he was running when he was killed and not preparing to fire at the officers, as police claimed.
Police routinely claim, in these instances, that the subject flashed (or fired) his gun and then ran, so when the officer fired in self-defense the individual was shot in the back. The same claim was made in the police killing of VonDerrit Myers Jr.
The Ball-Bey family’s attorneys believe that Ball-Bey was shot in a gangway and fell to his death after his spinal cord was severed. Also, the gunshot wound went straight to an artery that leads to the heart, Wooten said, and it would have been “impossible” for Ball-Bey to run two houses away, as police have claimed, after they shot him.
In response to this, Joyce stated in the report, “Three witnesses said the shooting occurred in the back of 1233 Walton, not in the gangway. Several witnesses say they saw Ball-Bey run past the front of the house after the shooting before he fell in the yard.”
Though Joyce said she concluded the evidence against the police shooter was not strong enough to bring charges, she was critical of the police work in the incident. In a press conference, Joyce said that one of the most troubling aspects of the case was that there were no officers stationed at the back door when the search warrant was executed. She stated that the officers were “mistakenly in the yard of the store” next to the raided house.
Police said that Ball-Bey and the 14-year-old witness, both black males, fled out the back of the house that they were raiding and ran into the alley. Wooten said only two individuals were inside the house at the time of the police raid, and both said that Ball-Bey was not in the house.
In her analysis, Joyce stated that Ball-Bey could have come up from the basement and the others could have been unaware he was in the building.
Wooten said that Ball-Bey and his friend were watching the raid from the alley when two police officers in plain clothes walked up and pointed guns at them. The boy also told him that the police didn’t say to stop or put their hands in the air, Wooten said, and they ran because they were afraid.
However, in the report, Joyce states that “Witness 2” – an off-duty officer who watched the raid from a yard across the alley – saw Ball-Bey flee from the back door. The witness also saw the police identified in vests marked “Police” across the front.
Mansur’s father, Dennis Ball-Bey, told The St. Louis American that his son was a loving person.
“He was loved by his people,” he said. “He respected his elders.”
The family believes Ball-Bey was shot wrongfully and is praying for justice, Irons-El said.
“These things must stop in St. Louis,” he said. “This happens all around the country. At some point, the families are going to have to get together – even if we have to go to the U.N. – and bring charges against some of these police departments.”
