Posted on 04/30/2007 10:37:19 PM PDT by FreedomCalls
Feds detail woman's death, officers' plea
Published on: 04/27/07
According to federal documents released Thursday, these are the events that led to Kathryn Johnston's death and the steps the officers took to cover their tracks.
Three narcotics agents were trolling the streets near the Bluffs in northwest Atlanta, a known market for drugs, midday on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.
Eventually they set their sights on some apartments on Lanier Street, usually fertile when narcotics agents are looking for arrests and seizures.
Gregg Junnier and another narcotics officer went inside the apartments around 2 p.m. while Jason Smith checked the woods. Smith found dozens of bags of marijuana — in baggies that were clear, blue or various other colors and packaged to sell. With no one connected to the pot, Smith stashed the bags in the trunk of the patrol car. A use was found for Smith's stash 90 minutes later: A phone tip led the three officers to a man in a "gold-colored jacket" who might be dealing. The man, identified as X in the documents but known as Fabian Sheats, spotted the cops and put something in his mouth. They found no drugs on Sheats, but came up with a use for the pot they found earlier.
They wanted information or they would arrest Sheats for dealing.
While Junnier called for a drug-sniffing dog, Smith planted some bags under a rock, which the K-9 unit found.
But if Sheats gave them something, he could walk.
Sheats pointed out 933 Neal St., the home of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston. That, he claimed, is where he spotted a kilogram of cocaine when he was there to buy crack from a man named "Sam."
They needed someone to go inside, but Sheats would not do for their purposes because he was not a certified confidential informant.
So about 5:05 p.m. they reached out by telephone to Alex White to make an undercover buy for them. They had experience with White and he had proved to be a reliable snitch.
But White had no transportation and could not help.
Still, Smith, Junnier and the other officer, Arthur Tesler, according to the state's case, ran with the information. They fabricated all the right answers to persuade a magistrate to give them a no-knock search warrant.
By 6 p.m., they had the legal document they needed to break into Kathryn Johnston's house, and within 40 minutes they were prying off the burglar bars and using a ram to burst through the elderly woman's front door. It took about two minutes to get inside, which gave Johnston time to retrieve her rusty .38 revolver.
Tesler was at the back door when Junnier, Smith and the other narcotics officers crashed through the front.
Johnston got off one shot, the bullet missing her target and hitting a porch roof. The three narcotics officers answered with 39 bullets.
Five or six bullets hit the terrified woman. Authorities never figured out who fired the fatal bullet, the one that hit Johnston in the chest. Some pieces of the other bullets — friendly fire — hit Junnier and two other cops.
The officers handcuffed the mortally wounded woman and searched the house.
There was no Sam.
There were no drugs.
There were no cameras that the officers had claimed was the reason for the no-knock warrant.
Just Johnston, handcuffed and bleeding on her living room floor.
That is when the officers took it to another level. Three baggies of marijuana were retrieved from the trunk of the car and planted in Johnston's basement. The rest of the pot from the trunk was dropped down a sewage drain and disappeared.
The three began getting their stories straight.
The next day, one of them, allegedly Tesler, completed the required incident report in which he wrote that the officers went to the house because their informant had bought crack at the Neal Street address. And Smith turned in two bags of crack to support that claim.
They plotted how they would cover up the lie.
They tried to line up one of their regular informants, Alex White, the reliable snitch with the unreliable transportation.
The officers' story would be that they met with White at an abandoned carwash Nov. 21 and gave him $50 to make the buy from Neal Street.
To add credibility to their story, they actually paid White his usual $30 fee for information and explained to him how he was to say the scenario played out if asked. An unidentified store owner kicked in another $100 to entice White to go along with the play.
The three cops spoke several times, assuring each other of the story they would tell.
But Junnier was the first to break.
On Dec. 11, three weeks after the shooting, Junnier told the FBI it was all a lie.
One can only hope these turds don’t receive special treatment and protections in prison.
What I want know is how they decided a sleeping man was depressed.
The infamous "cops just know?"
Bookmarking this thread for your post . . . Thanks.
LOL! Sad but true.
Carolyn
AARUGH! Their = there
What say you now loneranger? Did she get what she deserved?
These low lifes murdered an innocent old lady. They then lie and plant narcotics to cover up their unjustified killing. Lord have mercy!
I can’t wait for the loneranger from mass to show up.
What a disgusting article. These WOD warriors need to be put down.
That's because it's not standard operating procedure, in spite of what the FR druggies want us to believe.
Yawn.
That is just so backwards.
Bulldawg, you sure are a willing to cut the scumbos a lot of slack. In so doing on this site, I’ll have to salute your willingness to defend your position.
BUT - have you considered that handcuffing a mortally wounded 92 year old woman AND allowing her to die in those handcuffs while your scumbos planted evidence to hide their crime is little different than the German soldier shooting that wounded woman who survived the first shooting?
Might I ask how you can rationalize the fact that this was clearly and unambiguously Murder One and the scumbos were merely sentenced to 10 and 12 years?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Might I suggest that the fact that these “professionals” had shot each other and were taking care of “one of their own” while they watched the victim exsanguinate in handcuffs should have qualified them for perps in a hate crime?
As you live in Atlanta, perhaps you can explain why there was no real effort made to have these members of the “Armed and Dangerous” executed for their callous killing of an innocent victim? I can’t understand any of what occurred, nor the lack of public outrage.
If this isn’t a death penalty case it should be.
See Animal Farm by George Orwell: "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others."
Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, one of the writers the Founders quoted often, said it first;
-----
Of the Simplicity of Criminal Laws in different Governments
In republican governments, men are all equal; equal they are also in despotic governments:
in the former, because they are everything; in the latter, because they are nothing.
The Spirit of the Laws; Book VI, By Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu
-----
;-)
Nothing in my lifetime has destroyed so many of my fellow Americans.
I can't think of anything more stupid than getting high...what, are you lacking in imagination ?
But the War on Drugs has compromised our Constitutional Rights, led to corruption of LEOs, and done nothing to lessen the use of drugs.
Let's call it off and let the Law deal with the criminal behavior, not the drug-taking behavior.
There are other institutions which do a better job with addicts than the law and the courts.
Death penalty for each and every one of them.
This is worse than a mob hit, because it adds the abuse of government authority.
Maybe they got sick of the taste of jackboot polish.
we’ve got a cop around here that’s trying to pull that BS.
he shot himelf, and blamed it on “a black man.” started a manhunt, shut down schools, etc.
now he’s blaming it on the job being tough, and he didn’t get proper therapy/ counselling, he shouldn’t get in trouble, he just needs therapy.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.