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Fired Dallas officer explains why she shot suspect

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Jesse

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Dec 8, 2016, 5:52:08 AM12/8/16
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Damned woman couldn't shoot. If she had killed this turd there
would be no problem at all.

DALLAS — Amy Wilburn said she thought she was going to die.

In a deposition taken last month, the fired Dallas police senior
corporal explained why she shot Kelvion Walker in December 2013.

"I thought my kids were not going to have a mom or a dad,"
Wilburn said. "I had to shoot somebody — which I never thought I
would have to shoot somebody, and did not want to shoot
somebody."

Wilburn, 50, was fired and indicted on charges of aggravated
assault after an independent witness came forward saying she
shot Walker while he had his hands up.

Wilburn is one of two former Dallas police officers indicted for
on-duty police shootings. In the other case, former Officer
Cardan Spencer is accused of shooting a mentally ill man with a
knife who was standing still.

Spencer and Wilburn are the first Dallas police officers to be
indicted in connection with on-duty police shootings since the
1973 fatal shooting of 12-year-old Santos Rodriguez.

The accused officers each face up to life in prison if convicted.

Walker's attorney, Geoff Henley, said Walker has severe and
permanent injuries as a result of being shot in the stomach. He
is seeking a multi-million judgment in a federal civil rights
lawsuit.

In the deposition, Wilburn explained her version of what
happened on December 9, 2013.

Officers were chasing a car that had been taken earlier in the
day in a violent carjacking. Dashcam video shows the car pulling
around the corner and into an apartment complex on Military
Parkway in Pleasant Grove.

"We got behind them. They sped up," Wilburn said. "The driver
jumped out. My first thought is, 'Don't let it hit that
building,' because I don't know what's in that building, who's
in that building."

Wilburn jumped out and ran up to the moving car with her gun
still holstered.

"If I knew that car was occupied and was rolling, I would have
never approached it," Wilburn said.

She said she thought it was empty and tried to stop it.

Surprised to see Walker, she pulled out her weapon. Wilburn said
she told him to show his hands, but instead he made a quick
downward motion with his right hand.

Wilburn said Walker's left hand — the hand closest to her — was
on the console. She later said she didn't recall exactly where
it was, only that she could see it.

Attorney Henley said that's the first time Wilburn ever
mentioned that Walker's hand could have been on the console.

"I expected her to hold her ground — that the left hand was up
and the right hand was doing something else, but she couldn't
even explain what the left hand was doing," Henley said.

Walker said he looked at Wilburn "dead in the eye" and believes
she saw that his hands were up.

"I'm like, 'What'd you shoot me for?'" Walker said in his
deposition.

After shooting Walker, Wilburn put her weapon back into her
holster, but didn't realize she had dropped it. Another officer
passed the gun to her over the hood of the car.

An independent witness — a real estate agent who was sitting in
his car at the time of the incident — told police Walker had his
hands up when Wilburn shot him.

Wilburn said he must be mistaken.

"I think he just thinks he saw that," Wilburn said. "I would not
shoot somebody with their hands in the air if they were
surrendering."

It was only after the shooting that Wilburn realized that Walker
wasn't armed.

The video shows her going over to the passenger side several
times to check on an unconscious Walker.

"I was telling him the ambulance is coming," Wilburn said.
"'Just hang on.'"

Walker said that at one point she apologized, and indicated she
didn't mean to shoot him.

But according to Wilburn's deposition, she never said anything
like that to Walker.

At times in the aftermath of the shooting, she is seen in police
recordings putting her hands on her head.

"My thinking all along has been: She shot him, then she realized
afterward, 'Oh, no. What have I done?'" Henley said. "I think
she realizes she's done something catastrophically wrong."

Dallas police Chief David Brown, in his deposition, said that
Wilburn made a series of tactical errors that put her in a
terrible position. The chief said she never should have rushed
up to the car; she should have assumed it was occupied and
waited for backup.

The chief called the decision to fire Wilburn "gut-wrenching."

"She made a split-second decision that ended up being wrong,"
Brown said. "She could very well been right, and it could have
saved her life... but she just happened to be wrong, and it's an
unfortunate tragedy all the way around."

The chief said that by running up to the car, Wilburn had placed
herself in harm's way and that if Walker had been armed, he
could have grabbed a gun and shot her.

The chief repeatedly declined to express an opinion on the
criminal case, saying he did not want to influence the decision
of any future jury.

Still, Brown lauded Wilburn's courage in chasing what she
believed to be armed robbery suspects.

"I don't think it was intentional," Brown said. "I think through
a lot of errors, tactically, she got in a place where she put
herself where you could almost predict an error like that —
rushing up, hurriedly pulling your gun out with a moving car.
That's not we want officers to do."

But Brown added this: "Shooting unarmed suspects with their
hands up is just not what we can support."

Wilburn said she believes there was a rush to judgment in her
case, and she felt she was scapegoated. Despite what the chief
said, she doesn't believe Brown found it difficult to fire her.

"I mean, you don't fire five people and it's hard," she said,
referring to the fact that Brown fired five officers on the day
she was terminated.

Wilburn, a single mother, said that since her firing, she's
found work with a mobile X-ray van that goes to nursing homes
and houses. She had worked as an X-ray technician prior to
joining the department in 2001.

Since the shooting, Walker has moved to California, where he is
finishing his GED. He said he moved there to escape all the
publicity from the shooting.

Walker's doctor testified that he has permanent health problems
as a result of the shooting. He claims he did not know the car
he was a passenger in had been stolen. He was never arrested in
connection with the carjacking.

"It's like I have flashbacks about it all the time," Walker
said. "I believe she didn't do her job right."

http://www.wfaa.com/story/news/crime/2015/03/30/indicted-former-
dpd-officer-explains-reasoning-in-shooting/70697886/
 

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