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."
Hmm, in a sense, I suppose it was. :)
Personal attacks will get you the boot. My interest is in taking the blank-check New Deal Commerce Clause away from the liberals as a tool to advance their socialist agenda and expand the power of the federal government. The DEA's authority is based on that same doctrine, and if we're going to get it straightened out, we have to get our own house in order first.
Thank you first of all for the sentiments regarding my aunt. Jo was a remarkable woman. And my uncle has never been the same. It snapped something in him that will likely never be right again. It's unfortunate; but, that's life, you never know what will come your way.
The questions regarding alcohol ought to be a no brainer. I drank like a fish for years. But I decided when I did or did not. I didn't need rehab to get away from it. I went from drinking a fifth every other night to not drinking at all - because it was a choice - not an addiction. After four years I went back to social drinking and decided there was nothing there for me. I put it down again and haven't had a drop since. And I don't care if I take another drink or not. It doesn't bother me either way. Now as to the particulars, Alcohol is non addictive by and large. Alcoholism is a predisposition - not. My mother's second husband - my first stepdad - was an alcoholic. He's dead. Wanna guess what killed him. My parents have both been married 4 times. There isn't much of anything I haven't seen or been affected by either through them or through their 12 brothers and sisters and their families. Add to that the families of all their other spouses and the world starts getting really small. I have a deceased stepdad that died of alcoholism and an uncle that died before I ever knew him - hit by a drunk driver and burned to death in his car on US 35 in middle indiana. Till two years ago, there was still a clearly visible burn mark in the concrete in the spot where his car burned. I could take you right to the spot where it happened. They finally repaved that section of the road and it is now no longer that visible. One now has to look at the police reports to spot the location that precisely - save for our family. My grandmother hasn't traveled on US 35 since that day and never again will. Alcohol has the possibility of being a nuisance. But should it be outlawed? I'd say if it was abused to the level that drugs are, yes. Pot smokers by and large smoke to get high. Alcohol users drink to relax and once in a while get drunk. The percentages of population are inequalities by comparison. It's a no brainer. Funny thing is that this is brought up as though it's an intelligent and equally footed issue. It isn't. But its interesting that most of the pot smokers I know abuse alcohol and were busted at least once for underage drinking. Propensity to violate the law for a thrill - hmm. Does that sound like reckless irresponsibility combined with rebellion. It's what put my buddy through five endos and landed him upside down in his big blue bomb in a cemetary. Yeah, he was drunk and speeding - go figure. Nature of the beast. Quote us some goofy math and tell us of the evils of alcohol. I need a good laugh.
Begging the question. Endlessly.
It also doesn't give nut-burgers like yourself the authority to set up a Nanny State government either pal.
Or can you do what Roscoe has completely, and utterly, failed to do? That is, cite chapter and verse within the Constitution for the Feds to wage said war on drugs?
Also, just because some of our Rights are innumerated does not mean those are the only ones we have. We are the final arbeiters of what happens to our own flesh. If not, then we do not own ourselves and are little more than slaves.
If you advocate that, then as you say...
Get a life.
-Justice Clarence Thomas
Then how do you explain the DT's? How can you suffer potentially fatal withdrawl symptoms from something that is not addictive?
But you, tacticalogic, have produced exactly nothing to show that the CSA is grounded solely in a "substantial effects" argument. The very text of the CSA lays that misrepresentation to rest.
And what exactly, is it grounded in other than "substantial effects", or some rhetorical derivative of it?
In fact, the common law itself contained prohibitions. For example:
"The common law of England, including its prohibition of sodomy, became the received law of Georgia and the other Colonies." -- BOWERS v. HARDWICK, 478 U.S. 186 (1986)Other common law prohibitions included blasphemy, abortion, voting by felons, etc.
Just actions, eh?
Just at the state level, eh?
In other words, how can your posting have any bearing whatsoever on the legality of the Fed. Gov't's attempts to ban certain drugs?
Direct effects, for one. The CSA explicitly notes various aspects of the trade in illicit drugs which cross state lines.
"The subject to which the power is next applied is to commerce among the several states. The word among means intermingled with. A thing which is among others is intermingled with them. 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. Such a power would be inconvenient and is certainly unnecessary. Comprehensive as the word among is, it may very properly be restricted to that commerce which concerns more states than one."Now, have you got anything to support your position? Anything at all?
-- Gibbons v. Ogden (1824)
That what common law is.
Read a book.
As opposed to Invent!Falsify!Misrepresent!
Whew, tpaine maybe it is time that you look in the mirror. Just substitue tpaine for Roscoe in the above italicized passage and you have your(tpaine's) iamge.
That is so laughably pig-ignorant that I'm suprised you even bother posting to this thread.
Alcoholism is a predisposition - not. My mother's second husband - my first stepdad - was an alcoholic. He's dead. Wanna guess what killed him. My parents have both been married 4 times. There isn't much of anything I haven't seen or been affected by either through them or through their 12 brothers and sisters and their families. Add to that the families of all their other spouses and the world starts getting really small. I have a deceased stepdad that died of alcoholism and an uncle that died before I ever knew him - hit by a drunk driver and burned to death in his car on US 35 in middle indiana. Till two years ago, there was still a clearly visible burn mark in the concrete in the spot where his car burned. I could take you right to the spot where it happened. They finally repaved that section of the road and it is now no longer that visible. One now has to look at the police reports to spot the location that precisely - save for our family. My grandmother hasn't traveled on US 35 since that day and never again will.
So, after all the tragedy and suffering you just listed above, we now get....
Alcohol has the possibility of being a nuisance. But should it be outlawed? I'd say if it was abused to the level that drugs are, yes.
You have now exceeded your orignal statement and created yet a new low in sheer, jaw-dropping disregard of the facts. The facts simply do not support you contention: alcohol is by magnitudes the most widely abused and destructive substance in our society, as you previously cited examples already indicate.
Pot smokers by and large smoke to get high. Alcohol users drink to relax and once in a while get drunk. The percentages of population are inequalities by comparison. It's a no brainer. Funny thing is that this is brought up as though it's an intelligent and equally footed issue. It isn't. But its interesting that most of the pot smokers I know abuse alcohol and were busted at least once for underage drinking. Propensity to violate the law for a thrill - hmm. Does that sound like reckless irresponsibility combined with rebellion. It's what put my buddy through five endos and landed him upside down in his big blue bomb in a cemetary. Yeah, he was drunk and speeding - go figure.
But, hey, no biggie. Alcohol is just a nuisance, right?
Nature of the beast. Quote us some goofy math and tell us of the evils of alcohol. I need a good laugh.
I would have thought all those voices in your head would already have given you plenty.
That what common law is.
Read a book.
Is this website wrong?
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