A six-year-old boy lost his life after Texas deputies opened fire at a woman who was wanted for burglary and fraud charges. According to a lawsuit filed against the officers, the woman was non-violent and never drew a weapon.
The killing happened before Christmas 2017, according to the lawsuit. An attorney for the slain child’s parents recently sent a 16-page letter urging Bexar County commissioners to settle the lawsuit.
The letter says that a deputy involved in the shooting admitted he never saw the suspect draw a weapon because his eyes were closed, according to KENS-TV.
“What we had was a case where a call from a bounty hunter led to a two-hour police chase of a non-violent suspect, and it resulted in that suspect fleeing and standing in front of a mobile home where there was a child’s bicycle on the porch and a car in the driveway and a 6-year-old boy playing inside that had nothing to do with this police chase,” said Tom Crosley, an attorney for the boy’s father, Christopher Prescott. “Deputies in this case fired 20 rounds from assault rifles. And one of those rounds killed this innocent young child.”
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The incident began when deputies pursued suspect Amanda Jones because she was allegedly involved in a vehicle burglary, according to Sheriff Javier Salazar. But according to the lawsuit, a bounty hunter had alerted deputies to the woman because she was wanted on fraud and credit card abuse warrants.
One deputy had initially claimed that they opened fire because Jones had pointed a gun at him. He later admitted that he was lying and never say her draw a gun and instead “closed his eyes and flinched” when Jones ran past him.
During the pursuit, Jones walked into the mobile home, but Christopher Prescott immediately told her to leave, and she agreed because he had children and she did not want any trouble.
As she walked out to leave, deputies John Aguillon, George Herrera, Jesse Arias and Johnny Longoria opened fire. The lawsuit claims they shot 18 rounds at the suspect.
Kameron Prescott who was playing with a light-up sword in his bedroom, was hit by two bullets.
Deputies handcuffed his father and took the wounded boy to a hospital, where he later died, and Christopher Prescott said the last words he heard his son say were, “Ouch, daddy, ouch.”
“Why did it escalate to this?” the family’s attorney wrote. “Why did a bounty-hunter-initiated event result in the death of a child in an entirely different neighborhood? Why did our deputies (who were the only people that actually had guns) end up firing 20 rounds at an unarmed person and an obviously-occupied mobile home — a structure that would provide no meaningful resistance to gunfire? Does the County really believe almost 20 rounds fired at an occupied home was ‘only the amount of deadly force necessary?’”
You can see the pursuit from an arial view in the video clip below:
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