Fighting for an Innocent Death
Fighting for an Innocent DeathFighting for an Innocent Death
The four police officers acquitted of killing Amadou Diallo on the streets of the Bronx in New York should have been found guilty of second-degree murder. Edward McMellon, Sean Carroll, Kenneth Boss, and Richard Murphy are each part of the elite Street Crime Unit of the New York City Police Department. McMellon, Boss, and Carroll each have had previous investigations for using their weapons while on duty. Amadou Diallo was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Forty-one shots were fired at Diallo and nineteen actually struck him. He was an unarmed man and Dr. Joseph Cohen concluded after his autopsy �Diallo was paralyzed by one of the first shots, and based on the bullet paths, three hit Diallo after he was down� (Grace).
On February 4, 1999 just after midnight Amadou Diallo, an unarmed, innocent man was murdered in front of his apartment building by four New York City Police officers. The officers identified themselves and when Diallo reached in his back pocket to pull out what eventually was found to be a mere wallet the four police officers opened fire. Carroll shouted "Gun!" then he and McMellon immediately started shooting and each emptied their sixteen round clips into the body of a 22-year-old immigrant form Guinea. In a period of approximately eight seconds all forty-one shots were fired, and like an animal Diallo was killed, in front of his apartment-his sanctuary. Amadou Diallo was a street peddler who sold anything from socks to videotapes. He was a "shy, soft spoken man" with no criminal record (Robinson). Diallo was in the United States legally on a work visa, which would have expired in April of 1999.
After the execution ended, Carroll went to inspect the already deceased body of Amadou Diallo. When he saw there was no gun he immediately began to administer CPR pleading "Don't die! Don't die!" (qtd. in Morganthau). Tom Morganthau author of the article in NewsWeek "Cops in the Crossfire", summed it up best when he said, "Diallo was doomed from the moment the officers got out of the car" (2). These four police officers used unnecessary force. "Neighbors even testified there was a split-second pause in the long sequence of gunshots." (Morganthau) Did these trigger-happy cops take a moment to reconsider their decision to open fire on Diallo? Yes, they knew immediately how wrong the shooting was and they knew they were guilty of manslaughter. Bronx District Attorney Robert T. Johnson said �Officers �mistakes, their misjudgments, their preconceptions, led to a violent and horrible death of an innocent person�� (qtd. in De La Cruz).
All four police officers have told reporters and attorneys how desperately terrible they felt. Remorse does not bring a young innocent man back to life, however, and justice has not been obtained. Carroll,...
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