Posted on 03/02/2009 7:50:00 PM PST by Drew68
Family members and a man who lives on the Denver block where a police officer shot a motorist Thursday night are raising questions about the death.
The family of Davlon Reagor, 37, gathered today at the spot where he was killed, bringing flowers, balloons and grief.
Police have yet to release the name of the dead driver but aunts and other relatives said it was Reagor. "He was not a criminal. He had made mistakes like we all do. This could have been dealt with in a better way," said Reagor's aunt, Alberta Henderson, 48.
Records show that he had been arrested 37 times since 1990, however.
Reagor was behind the wheel of his girlfriend's 1986 Ford Escort when a Denver police officer shot him.
Following the shooting, Denver police released a statement saying that an officer attempted to stop a speeding car about 10:25 p.m. on Thursday.
The driver refused to stop, then lost control of his vehicle, according to the release.
The vehicle came to rest facing north on Lafayette Street, just a few feet south of East Fifth Avenue in Denver's Country Club neighborhood.
Police said the officer got out of his cruiser and approached the vehicle on foot. The suspect raced his engine, causing the officer to think he was about to be run over, so he fired a number of rounds into the vehicle's windshield.
Police have not yet released the officer's name and on Sunday police spokeswoman Sharon Avendaño said there had been no pursuit. She had no further details on the incident.
Tom Scholten, 50, heard the gunshots about 10:30 p.m. and went to his window. He saw a Denver police cruiser parked at a 45-degree angle to the curb on 5th Avenue about 15 to 20 feet from the corner of Lafayette.
The Ford was at a stop sign on Lafayette facing 5th Avenue and the officer was in between the two vehicles with the gun still pointed at the windshield, he said.
"Why didn't he run into the car or cut him off," Scholten said.
Family members questioned why there were no skid marks or other evidence that someone had been speeding near the intersection.
Reagor had been classified as a habitual offender in Colorado courts with the 37 arrests, including seven escape and failure to appear charges, as well as arrests on drug, theft and menacing charges, according to police records. He used seven aliases, most variations on the spelling of his name, court records indicate.
He served an extensive amount of time in local jails and state prisons. He escaped from custody six separate times.
Reagor's mother, Carol Braxton, said Reagor called her before he was shot and said that he had had a fight with his girlfriend and he was planning to come to his mother's home.
The girlfriend told Braxton that Reagor stole her car, her money and assaulted her before leaving her Denver home. She said she believes the girlfriend called police to report Reagor prior to the shooting.
Reagor was the third son that Braxton has lost to violence. In 1995, Royce Reagor, 27, was stabbed to death at the Fremont Correctional Center.
In 1993, Tymone Reagor was killed after a gunman knocked on his door and asked for crack. The man shot him when he grabbed for the gun, according to a news report of the time.
Davlon Reagor's shooting is under investigation.
Mom’s probably up for Parenting Tzar.
I will argue with the best of them when a cop oversteps his/her authority and needs to be brought up short, but in this case it sounds like he may have had a good reason for shooting this guy. At any rate the guy was hardly a model citizen. Shooting someone you think is going to run you over may seem somewhat extreme but at the same time waiting until the car actually hits you usually throws your aim off.
Here is one guy speaking out quite strongly on the issue:
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“I wonder if this woman feels even a nano-second of responsibility for the violent ends of her three sons, as well as the gobs of misery they were responsible for inflicting on others?”
Not a chance.
Sorry to inform you we are not taking care of this, this mother worked most of her life and the murder victim worked for a living as well. Maybe we should just speak on what we do know, you would not even be talking this way if you were not given information about his past. And of course this makes the cops look good so you think.
“Sorry to inform you we are not taking care of this, this mother worked most of her life and the murder victim worked for a living as well. Maybe we should just speak on what we do know, you would not even be talking this way if you were not given information about his past. And of course this makes the cops look good so you think.”
Good for them. The fewer people on the public dole, the better.
I couldn’t care less how this makes the police look. I was commenting on what went horribly wrong in a family that three children would lose their lives in violent ways, and that this particular man made enough “mistakes” to be arrested 37 times.
I am shocked that this is not a welfare family, but at least they made their own choices in life. It is always tragic for someone to lose his life needlessly...and this was a needless loss of life.
By "murder victim" do you mean the career criminal shot by the cops? If you will, please indulge us on what he did for a living.
Was he or was he not arrested 37 times?
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