Antwun Parker's Mom Says Son's A 'Hero'

OKLAHOMA CITY -- For the first time in a year, the mother of 16-year-old Antwun Parker, who was shot and killed by pharmacist Jerome Ersland, is speaking publicly.

According to police, Parker and a friend tried to rob the pharmacist at gunpoint in May 2009. Investigators said Ersland knocked Parker to the ground with one shot to the head, grabbed a different weapon and fired five more shots into his chest and abdomen.

"A coward is someone who will kill someone when they're done," said Parker's mother, Cleta Jennings. "That's not a hero. The real hero here is Antwun."

Jennings said that while her son did go into the pharmacy with a gun, she believes other people put him up to it.

"I know he was scared to death," she said. "I know Antwun was scared to death when he had to go into that pharmacy not under his own will."

In an exclusive interview with KOCO, Jennings said she was angry when she found out two pathologists with the Oklahoma County Medical Examiner's Office filed conflicting statements, which call the former chief's ruling into question. That ruling could affect the District Attorney's decision to prosecute.

"That man literally shot my son down, had no remorse, went back, got another gun, reloaded it and came back and shot him five more times," Jennings said.

The interim chief said he's still reviewing the case. District Attorney David Prater said he's not prepared to drop the case against Jerome Ersland, but said it is his duty to listen to all evidence that's brought forth in every case.

"He still should have had a chance to go to court and defend himself," she said. "He's just like everybody else, innocent until proven guilty."

She said she will continue to share his story and remember his achievements as she carries the pain inside her.

She said she may file a civil lawsuit against Ersland if she's not happy with the course of action in the criminal case.

"and I suspect you saw it because you have an attitude about guns and self-defense that I would probably find offensive. What I saw was a man defending himself and other from someone who was part of a group of thugs who came into the store with a gun and threatened the lives of all inside. If you knew anything at all about self defense, you’d know that you don’t let an attacker get the chance to get to a weapon. "

Being from Houston and reading about the extraordinary mindless violence of places like Airline drive in my youth, I could not wait until I could join that scene to test my own talents and abilities, I was big enough and tough enough that I made it there four years before I could legally go to bars, as that scene died down, I graduated to the black wards of Houston because I liked to feel a little edge when I was visiting a bar, that was a lifetime ago.

The incredible number of bar fights in which I have never lost, the number of times that I have had to face men armed with knives or guns and have prevailed (unarmed), the number of times that I have been shot at and missed, the number of shootings that I have seen, and the number of times that I have had to step over, or around a victim to get to the men's room or outside as a I lived a life largely of what people call a drifter and what I call a pursuit of excitement and personal challenges and knowledge, leads me to think that I know a little something about the whole violence, self defense scene.

Read posts 59 and 90, then watch the video in post 90, the coroners report, the detectives investigation, the video that we can see, all point to the state's conclusion that the robber was unconcious, on his back splayed out with hands showing, had never been armed, and lay there without moving around or reacting as the bullets entered his already unconcious body.

A robber being killed isn't the interesting part of this event, the exposure of Mr. Ersland is what is interesting, a psycho killer with Walter Mitty illusions of heroic feats, and fittingly, a fake war hero to boot, claiming that he was disabled in that non existent combat, and bandaging a non existent wound in this phony war story where he claims hand to hand, and then dodging bullets in a nonexistent shoot out.

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