Walmart shooting victim was 'figuring out his next step'
The phone call plays back in John Crawford Jr.'s head "every day, all day" since Aug. 5.
The mother of his son's young children – boys, five months and nearly 2 – was screaming.
Crawford Jr. was in Fairfield on business that Tuesday and had stopped by to see if his son, John Crawford III, would join him for dinner. But his son had already left for a cookout in Dayton, Ohio.
"Mr. John. Mr. John. They shot him. They shot him," Crawford recalls the cries from LeeCee Johnson.
She put her cell phone on speaker.
"You could hear in the background he was gasping," John Crawford Jr. told The Enquirer in a phone interview this week from his home in Jackson, Tenn. "I'm virtually listening to my kid taking his last breath."
Crawford Jr. painted the dramatic scene Thursday as he talked to The Enquirer about his son's life and what he wants from the investigation into his son's fatal shooting by police at a Walmart in the Dayton suburb of Beavercreek on Aug. 5.
The shooting
has drawn national attention in the wake of the death of 18-year-old Michael Brown, who was gunned down by a Ferguson, Mo., police officer
and a series of shootings of black males by police elsewhere. The Crawford investigation has even become an issue in the November election as Ohio Attorney General's Mike DeWine's
contender David Pepper has suggested DeWine's involvement in the Crawford investigation is unethical.
The shooting came seven days after Crawford Jr. had celebrated his son's 22nd birthday together with a few rounds of pool at Memories Sports Bar in Fairfield, where Crawford III had resided for three or four years following graduation from Greensburg Christian Academy in Indiana.
Crawford III had lived in Cincinnati pretty much all of his life, attending at least 11 private, public or charter schools since entering the first grade in 1998, Cincinnati Public School records show. Crawford Jr., who had never married his son's mother, Tressa Sherrod of Fairfield, said he visited their only son nearly every weekend.
On that day at Memories, Crawford III, frustrated by not being able to find a job, had confided to his father that he wanted to start college. Crawford III, who had played football in high school, had shopped around for a football scholarship after high school, his father said. When that didn't happen, sons John IV and Jayden came along and plans for college were put on hold.
'He was figuring out his next step'
Crawford Jr. described his son as a typical 22-year-old who was laid back and very family oriented. He had once considered going into the military, following in the footsteps of a grandfather who served in the Army.
Hamilton County court records show that Crawford III had some minor scrapes with the law – two payout tickets for marijuana possession and a disorderly conduct charge.
He was charged with serious felonies in 2013 for allegedly carrying a concealed weapon and for aggravated robbery involving an incident at Clovernook Country Club. However, a Hamilton County grand jury declined to indict Crawford III. His father said Crawford III was wrongly accused and was charged because he was in a car with his cousin, but had no involvement in what happened.
"He was just figuring it out. He was figuring out his next step. I remember when I was 22," said Crawford Jr., a college graduate who worked in the court system in Tennessee for two decades. "Unfortunately, all of that was cut down on the night of Aug. 5,"
That's when authorities have said that Crawford III was walking around the Walmart store with a MK-177 BB/Pellet Rifle. He was pronounced dead at Miami Valley Hospital around 9:25 p.m. shortly after police officers opened fire at the store.
Crawford Jr. said his son was at the store with a female friend to pick up picnic items on the way to a cookout in Dayton. Crawford III walked around the store and away from the female friend after receiving a call from Johnson. She could not be reached for comment.
Crawford Jr. has disputed that his son was waving the air rifle around and had refused to comply with police commands to drop it. Police responded when customers called 911, believing the gun was real. Police have said they repeatedly told Crawford III to put the gun down.
What does security footage show?
Crawford Jr. said security footage of the shooting and the time leading up to it – which he and family lawyer, Michael Wright, have viewed – shows that his son was standing in an aisle of the pet department holding the air rifle with his left hand with the barrel pointing to the floor. Crawford III was talking on his cell phone to Johnson with his back to the officers when he was shot, his father said.
"The footage we saw, he didn't know the officers were in the store. There was no reaction (from him) at all by the time the trigger was pulled," Crawford Jr. said.
"We were waiting to see him menacing, waving this thing in a threatening position with women or children. None of that happened from the footage we saw. He wasn't doing anything. He was just standing there. The final analysis is that my son was murdered."
"All this nonsense of (them saying) 'Put the weapon down' two or three times. There was no reaction from him. There couldn't have been a cadence given."
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine has refused to release the surveillance video to the public while the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI), a branch of DeWine's office, investigates the shooting to determine if Beavercreek Officers Sean Williams or Sgt. David Darkow broke the law.
Wright said the coroner has told him that Crawford III was shot twice. The final autopsy report has not been completed. Crawford Jr. said the family has not been told which of the two officers shot his son. Williams remains off duty, while Darkow has returned to work.
The Greene County prosecutor has asked for a special prosecutor to avoid any appearance of a possible conflict of interest because DeWine – whose office would typically prosecute the case – used to be Green County prosecutor and his daughter now is an assistant prosecutor there.
Assistant Hamilton County Prosecutor Mark Piepmeier is now leading the prosecution team as special prosecutor. Wright has asked the U.S. Attorney's Office to take over the investigation and look into potential civil rights violation. He wants DeWine off the case altogether, saying DeWine is too close to people at the center of the investigation. It's a demand DeWine has refused.
DeWine's spokesman Dan Tierney said there's no conflict because DeWine is not directly involved in the investigation.
Beavercreek police officials asked for BCI to investigate the shooting because it was a conflict for them to fairly investigate their own officers, Tierney said. Greene County Prosecutor Stephen Haller sought a special prosecutor from the attorney general's office, but DeWine suggested Piepmeier because of his experience in prosecuting use of force cases.
Taking the investigation away from BCI and handing it over to another agency would cause a delay because the new agency would have to start from scratch, Tierney said.
"Our goal is to do a very thorough investigation but to make sure it is concluded in a compressed length of time to allow closure to the family," he said.
Crawford Jr. thinks that race played a factor in the shooting.
"I think there would have been more tolerance. We are not inside the cop's head. But I would be not honest with you if I didn't (say) there was a little bit of racial undertone in this whole situation," Crawford Jr. said.
That's why Wright and the family are trying to get the U.S. Department of Justice involved in the investigation.
"We do believe there was a violation of his civil rights and that does have to do with race," Wright said.
