Posted on 10/01/2002 7:16:59 AM PDT by Phantom Lord
Dozens protest Preble County police shooting
Slain man’s roommates say he was unarmed
EATON | Preble County law-enforcement officials declined to talk publicly Monday as they turned information about Friday's fatal shooting by a police officer of a 23-year-old man over to detectives from the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office.
Montgomery County investigators, called in by Preble County Sheriff Tom Hayes, also said they would not talk about their review of the shooting by a member of a Preble County's emergency services group — officers from a number of police departments who are trained to handle drownings and hostage and other situations.
However, it was anything but quiet outside the Preble County Courthouse, where dozens of friends and relatives picketed and said that police were covering up what happened to Clayton Jacob Helriggle, 23, of 1282 Ohio 503 South.
The protesters disputed police claims that Helriggle had a gun when he descended a stairwell and was shot by a Lewisburg police officer, whose identity has not been released. Friends and relatives on Monday carried blue plastic cups similar to the one they said Helriggle had in his hand Friday night.
Among the protesters were four of Helriggle's roommates, three of whom said they were inside the brick farmhouse when police stormed the house to serve a warrant to search for narcotics.
Maj. Wayne Simpson of the Preble County Sheriff's Office declined to discuss information about what happened Friday night and said a report on the shooting of the Preble County man had not been completed. Preble County Prosecutor Rebecca Ferguson said she sealed the search warrant after the shooting, and had no comment regarding the investigation.
"They're a professional group of officers, that's what their job is, and I'm not going to second-guess them. Whatever (Montgomery County officials) come up with, they come up with," Ferguson said.
Friends called Helriggle "peaceful and nonviolent," but police said the 1997 Twin Valley South High School graduate held a 9 mm handgun, not a blue cup, in his right hand when he descended the dimly lighted stairs. Roommates said Helriggle owned a 9 mm gun, but that it was upstairs when police entered their house.
"It's like we were armed, hardened criminals waiting inside to take them on," said Wes Bradley, 26, who lived in the bottom of the six-bedroom farmhouse with his girlfriend, 22-year-old Tasha Webster.
Bradley said he and Webster were near the kitchen next to the stairs, when officers "broke through the back door with battering rams and started throwing in flash grenades three at a time, to blind us."
The officers wore full body armor and carried shields, he said.
Another roommate, Ian Albert, said he had returned home from the grocery store with Chris Elmore, 24, who remained outside while Albert ran into the house.
"We saw at least two paddy wagon-type vehicles, like a SWAT bus," Elmore said. "About 30 officers stormed out of the woods" surrounding the farmhouse. "They'd cut the barbed wire, and you could see a staging area, like where 25 to 30 uniformed cops had been lying down and slithered along the grass."
Officers ordered Elmore to get on the ground, and he said he heard three pops, which he said could have been the flash grenades and gunshot.
"I yelled 'Nobody's armed,' and they told me, 'Shut up, shut up.' ”
Elmore described the action "like a movie, in slow motion."
Inside, Albert said, the police threw him against the staircase, "with my head on the second step up. I wanted to yell at Clay, but I looked up and saw him, rounding the stairway, and he had this look on his face, like, 'What's going on?' and the cops yelled, 'Get down' and then 'boom.' ”
Albert, who completed four months of Navy Seal training, said he reached up for Helriggle, "and I tried to apply pressure," he said, placing his left palm on his right chest, where Helriggle was struck by the gunshot.
"He died in my arms," he said. "It took about two minutes."
Albert said he was placed in a sheriff's car, and Helriggle's parents arrived.
"They saw me, drenched in Clay's blood, and they ask me, 'Is he all right?' and I just shook my head. The cops are smoking and joking, high-fiving each other. Wow, I think, they took down a farm of unarmed hippies.
"If they would have come to the door and said, 'Give us your dope, hippies,' we'd have gotten about a $100 ticket."
Police said they confiscated a small amount of marijuana, pills, drug paraphernalia and quantities of packaging items used in the distribution of marijuana.
The four roommates said they smoke marijuana from time to time and that they had marijuana pipes in the house. Bradley said he had a prescription for Fiorocet, a codeinelike painkiller, for a bad knee. They said the packaging police referred to was a box of plastic sandwich bags.
Webster said there was nothing in the house "that a good divorce lawyer couldn't have gotten us out on a misdemeanor," and said an old shotgun and a .22-caliber rifle found there were used for hunting.
"We target-practiced outside all the time, shot at bales of hay, jugs, that sort of thing," Webster said.
Bradley and Webster said Helriggle took a nap around 5 p.m. and had made plans to meet his girlfriend later.
"I'm not sure if he woke up from the bashing on the door or what," Bradley said.
All four said they were not read their rights or told what charges were filed against them. They were released from the Preble County Jail around 1:30 a.m. Saturday. No criminal charges have been filed.
Nancy Fahrenholz, the daughter of Everett "Bill" Fahrenholz, an attorney and former country prosecutor, hugged Bradley on Monday at the courthouse. Helriggle and five roommates rented the house from the Fahrenholzes.
"I'm so sorry," said Fahrenholz, a Rhode Island resident in the area to finish up the estate of her father, Bill Fahrenholz, who died a month ago.
"(Dad) would have been furious at this," she said. "We're all very distressed."
She said Helriggle "was a really nice guy," and that her family was pleased with the five young people's work on rehabilitating the farmhouse.
Helriggle's 77-year-old grandfather, Donald, a Miamisburg resident and Ohio Bell retiree, said his grandson rented the farmhouse "so they could play their instruments, listen to their music and drink a little beer. . . . They just wanted to be doing what 23-year-olds do."
My answer to that would be, why didn't they simply pass a law and use the Commerce clause as their justification? The Commerce clause is just as potent as an Amendment if that is your argument...
The findings don't, the statute does.
Nor do 'statutes' show the constitutional basis of how congressional 'findings & declarations' can prohibit the possession of certain types of property.
KEYWORDS: 762 MM BUZZ; ANOTHER WOD SUCCESS; BLIND COPS; BS PRESS RELEASE; CHOICE OBEY OR PAY; DONT BOGART THAT MP5; DOPER BITES DUST; DOPER WHINEFEST; DRUG GESTAPO; DRUGGIE MEET DARWIN; DRUGSBAD DOPERSWORSE; ERNEST IS A FOOL; GENE POOL CLEANER; GOVERNMENT KILLING; GUBMINT EXTREMISTS; HIPPIE DOPER JUSTICE; JACK BOOTED THUG; LIBERDOPIANS AGAIN; MJ; O SAY CAN YOU THC; OBEY THE LAW OR PAY; POLICE; POT SMOKING NERD; SHOOTING; SPIKE TRAPS; SSSSSSSMOKIN; STATIST GOONS ALERT; SWAT; THE LAW IS THE LAW; THEWEEDSOFSTUPIDITY; TOOK BONG TO GUNFITE; WACKY TERBACKY; WHINEY HINEY DRUGIES; WOD; WOD CIRCLE JERKAnyone think this might be the issue on which Freepers are most divided? LOL
-Eric
Neither do you, if it involves the "substantial effects" test being applied to the Commerce Clause prior to 1937.
As I'm sure you know, the answer is simple, but Roscoe will never admit it. It's because until the federal regulatory craze of the New Deal gave the Commerce Clause such broad reach, such an overtly prohibitionary law would've probably been struck down as unconstitutional.
No.
Your question was "why Congress felt it necessary."
Who said they did?
At the national borders. Within our borders, it's contraband.
They? Congress wasn't even the moving force behind the Amendment.
You've ceased making an argument. Try something else.
What are you trying to say here Roscoe, that they passed it for sheer enjoyment? Did they just get up one day and all decide that they wanted to piss everybody off? What about the state legislatures that ratified the Amendment, did they just pass this for kicks as well?
Here's the problem, suppose the police get the wrong house - it does happen. And innocent homeowner responds to the sound of his front door getting kicked in by investigating with a firearm in his hand(s) as is his right?
"I'm sorry" to the widow and her kids on the part of the police ain't gonna cut it.
"A major portion of the traffic in controlled substances flows through interstate and foreign commerce. Incidents of the traffic which are not an integral part of the interstate or foreign flow, such as manufacture, local distribution, and possession, nonetheless have a substantial and direct effect upon interstate commerce . . . . ."
-- UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT, No. 253 August Term, 1996"Commerce among the states cannot stop at the external boundary line of each state, but may be introduced into the interior. It is not intended to say that these words comprehend that commerce which is completely internal, which is carried on between man and man in a state, or between different parts of the same state, and which does not extend to or affect other states. ."
-- United States Supreme Court, Gibbons v. Ogden, 9 Wheat. 1 (1824)"Drug trafficking organizations in Mexico and Colombia produce an estimated 10,000 metric tons of marijuana yearly; approximately 7,500 metric tons of that marijuana is intended for U.S. markets."
Gimme Ganja ya ya yaaa ya.
Congress wasn't even the force seeking passage of a Constitutional Amendment. The Amendment was ratified by the states.
The Anti-Saloon League, the Woman's Christian Temperance Union and the Prohibition Party were some of the key groups seeking the Amendment, which they felt would never be repealed.
I know. Sources, cites, links, facts, figures and the like aren't to your liking. Perhaps I could follow your lead and simply make assertions.
In 1824. So much for the whackjob assertion that all of the courts in America for the last 70 years have been part of a "New Deal" conspiracy.
Oh, and the illicit drug trade is actual commerce.
"A major portion of the traffic in controlled substances flows through interstate and foreign commerce. Incidents of the traffic which are not an integral part of the interstate or foreign flow, such as manufacture, local distribution, and possession, nonetheless have a substantial and direct effect upon interstate commerce . . . . ."
-- UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT, No. 253 August Term, 1996
But Roscoe, Congress IS responsible for drawing up the Amendment and SUBMITTING it to the States..
They COULD have simply passed an Act which would have prohibited liquor under the Commerce clause (if that clause WOULD empower them to do so). As they obviously saw that such an action WOULD be unconstitutional, they knew that they HAD to add an Amendment to the Constitution in order to PROHIBIT liquor.
One interesting point to be made here as well is the fact that although the 18th Amendment prohibited the sale, manufacture, and transportation of liquor, it DIDN'T prohibit possesion. Apparently, they thought that would never survive a constitutional challenge. Equally apparent is the fact that those who drafted our current drug laws simply don't care if it's constitutional or not...
Sources, cites, links, facts, and figures are meaningless when you don't know what the Christ you're talking about, Roscoe. Try taking a Con Law class before you get all huffy!
He whimpered.
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