Autopsy Indicates Officer Shot Unarmed Teen William
Chapman From Distance
Eighteen-year-old
was not close enough to officer Stephen Rankin to pose a threat, says family
lawyer, as report shows he was subsequently handcuffed
Jon Swaine in New York | @jonswaine
Monday 24 August 2015 07.15 EDT
An unarmed black 18-year-old was fatally shot in the face by a police officer from several feet away during their confrontation outside a supermarket in Virginia earlier this year, the findings of his autopsy indicate.
The typical signs of a close- or body-contact shooting were not found around the bullet wounds William Chapman sustained in the head and chest when he was killed by Officer Stephen Rankin in the parking lot of a Walmart in Portsmouth on 22 April. Chapman was the second unarmed man to be shot dead by Rankin.
“There is no
evidence of close-range fire to visual inspection,” wrote Wendy Gunther, an
assistant chief medical examiner for Virginia. Gunther said a definitive ruling
would be made by the state’s department of forensic sciences.
A copy of
Gunther’s report was obtained by the Guardian from a source who was not authorized
to release it to the media, along with a separate toxicology report from state
forensic investigators that said Chapman’s blood showed no traces of alcohol or
drugs.
Rankin and Chapman engaged in a physical
struggle after Rankin tried to arrest the 18-year-old on suspicion of
shoplifting from the Walmart, according to police. Witnesses said Chapman broke
free and then stepped back towards the officer aggressively before being shot
twice. A decision on whether Rankin will be prosecuted is expected to be made
by authorities in the coming days.
An attorney
for Chapman’s family, who said he was preparing a civil lawsuit against Rankin
even before state prosecutors make their decision, said the physical evidence
suggested Chapman had not been near enough to Rankin to pose a threat.
“If an unarmed
person is not in close proximity to the police officer, not in his so-called
‘wingspan’, then to say the officer shooting and killing that person is pretty
excessive may be the greatest understatement of the year,” said attorney Jon
Michael Babineau.
Gunther’s
report said “no fouling or stippling” – the sooty residue and speckled
gunpowder burns typically left by a close- or intermediate-range gunshot – were
found on the skin around either of Chapman’s wounds, nor on the clothing where
the shot to his chest entered.
Dr Judy Melinek,
a prominent California-based forensic pathologist who frequently testifies as
an expert witness, said in an email after reviewing the autopsy report that
unless some other object created an obstruction between Rankin and Chapman,
“the absence of soot or stippling means it is a distant range gunshot wound”.
Melinek classes a “distant” shot as being from more than 30 inches away.
Dr David Fowler,
the chief medical examiner for neighboring Maryland, said in a brief telephone
interview on Friday: “These are fairly small particles, and while they may be
coming out at the same speed as the bullet, they have very little mass and an
odd shape, so they lose velocity very rapidly.”
Fowler added:
“Typically the fragments of unburnt gunpowder and soot travel out somewhere in
the region up to 12in for a handgun, maximum, maybe 18in for a very powerful
handgun.”
The Virginia
autopsy was carried out the day after Chapman’s death. The report also said
Chapman’s hands were cuffed behind his back. Babineau, the attorney for
Chapman’s family, said scuff-like abrasions on the 18-year-old’s face and chest
indicated he was rolled on to his front, cuffed, then rolled back again, after
being fatally shot. Chapman was 5ft 8in tall and weighed about 185lbs.
Police and
store managers still have not said if Chapman was found to have stolen anything
from Walmart. The autopsy report lists clothes and shoes as his only personal
effects, including a pair of trousers with the pockets turned inside out.
His family
said he frequently browsed the store. Babineau said that through his own
inquiries and interviews with witnesses, he had found no indication Chapman was
carrying stolen merchandise, and that he appeared to have turned out the
pockets to show they were empty.
This
may be answered conclusively by surveillance footage recorded inside the store
that was collected by investigators. The shooting itself, which took place just
inside the perimeter of the large parking lot, close to the street, is
understood not to have been captured on camera.
An
inquiry into the shooting has been completed by Virginia state police and
passed to Stephanie
Morales, the Virginia commonwealth’s attorney for Portsmouth. The
prosecutor also commissioned “additional investigative work” and tests by the
state department of forensic science, according to Tamara Shewmake, a
spokeswoman for the prosecutor.
The
spokeswoman said earlier this week that following a delay, Morales expected to
have received all the forensic files by Friday 21 August.
“Once
all findings have been turned over to the commonwealth’s attorney, there will
be a review and final prosecutorial determination,” Shewmake said.
Sources
familiar with the inquiry said the week-long delay was due to Morales
commissioning an advanced type of forensic analysis that had never before been
completed by Virginia state officials.
The
sources said Morales, who is 31 and newly elected earlier this year, had no
intention of passing the case to an outside jurisdiction or special prosecutor,
and that she had indicated she would present the case to a grand jury within
Portsmouth, which is an independent city, if she decided to prosecute Rankin.
Once
Rankin’s name was published, McGowan denied he had confirmed it, then suggested
he had not been authorized to confirm it, then said he would never again speak
to a reporter from the newspaper. McGowan has refused to identify Rankin’s
attorney or an alternative representative.
Rankin,
36, is a veteran of the US navy who earned a grey belt in the the
Marine Corps martial arts programme, which requires the ability to “stop an
aggressor’s attack” with hand-to-hand combat.
The
officer was placed on administrative leave after shooting Chapman. In April
2011 he
fatally shot Kirill Denyakin, a Kazakh cook, less than three miles from the
site of Chapman’s death. Denyakin was shot 11 times by Rankin, who was
responding to a 911 call about the 26-year-old aggressively banging at the door
of a building where he was staying.
Rankin
said he shot Denyakin because the cook, who was drunk, charged at him while
reaching into the waistband of his jeans. The officer said he feared Denyakin
would pull out a weapon. No weapon was found.
A
grand jury declined to indict Rankin on criminal charges and a jury in a $22m
civil lawsuit brought by Denyakin’s family found in Rankin’s favor.
Among
250 posts defending himself on a local newspaper website, Rankin wrote: “22 mil
wont buy your boy back,” adding that most Americans could not hope to earn that
in an entire career, “let alone a habitual drunk working as a hotel cook”.
The
standfirst of this story was amended on 24 August 2015 to make clearer that
William Chapman was handcuffed after he was shot.
William Chapman: Unarmed 18-Year-Old Shot Dead by Officer
Who Killed Before
Black teenager accused of shoplifting at
Walmart killed in April by white officer Stephen Rankin, who had been suspended
for shooting another unarmed man
Jon Swaine in Portsmouth, Virginia | @jonswaine
Monday 1 June 2015 08.42 EDT
An
unarmed black 18-year-old accused of shoplifting was killed by a police officer
in Virginia who had
been barred from patrolling city streets for almost three years after fatally
shooting another unarmed man.
William
Chapman was shot
dead by Stephen Rankin, a white Portsmouth police officer, during a
struggle in a Walmart parking lot. Rankin, 35, a US navy veteran trained in
martial arts, was once disciplined for posting violent remarks and Nazi images
online.
Chapman’s
family likened his death to that of Michael Brown, another unarmed black
18-year-old who was suspected of a theft and shot dead following a struggle
with a white officer. Brown’s death last year in Ferguson unleashed nationwide
protests.
But
they noted with disappointment that Chapman’s killing in April barely
registered among activists and the media. “I feel alone,” said Chapman’s
mother, Sallie. “Because my son is gone and because nobody is trying to help me
understand why.”
The
Virginia chief medical examiner’s office said in a statement only that the
cause of Chapman’s death was “gunshot wounds of face and chest”. Chapman’s
mother said his hands were also wounded in the encounter, a claim supported by
photographs of his body reviewed by the Guardian.
Chiefs
only allowed Rankin to return to frontline policing in March last year, almost
three years after he killed an unarmed 26-year-old Kazakh immigrant in February
2011. Rankin was later found to have insulted the man and his family in other
online postings.
A
sergeant in the department at the time told the Guardian that senior commanders
were formally warned by one of Rankin’s supervisors weeks before his first
fatal shooting that he was “dangerous” and likely to cause someone harm.
Asked
twice during a telephone interview why Rankin had been allowed to continue
policing the public, Portsmouth’s police chief, Edward Hargis, repeated:
“That’s a personnel matter and I can’t comment.” He added: “I’m not going to
comment on what people may say, allegation-wise.”
Police
refused to say whether Chapman was actually found to have stolen anything. They
will still not confirm it was Rankin who shot him. However, the head of
Rankin’s professional association confirmed to the Guardian he was indeed the
officer involved.
Rankin
fired twice after Chapman resisted an arrest at the edge of the superstore
parking lot on the morning of 22 April and a struggle ensued, according to
witnesses. The officer was responding to a complaint by store staff of a
“suspected shoplifting”.
A
funeral service was held for Chapman last month but his body has not yet been
buried because his family is unable to afford the $3,600 fee, relatives said.
His
shooting is being investigated by the Virginia state police, which is also
carrying out an inquiry into the fatal shooting by another Portsmouth officer a
month earlier of Walter Brown, a 29-year-old black man who fled a stop by drugs
police.
Sergeant
Michelle Anaya, a state police spokeswoman, declined to discuss any details of
what happened in Chapman’s shooting. “That investigation is currently ongoing
and that information is not available at this time for release,” she said in an
email.
Brandon
Jones, also 18, was killed by a police officer in Cleveland, Ohio, in March
after a struggle when he was caught robbing a grocery store, according to
authorities. Earlier that month, Tony Robinson, 19, was shot dead by an officer
looking into a disturbance in Madison, Wisconsin. Last month state prosecutors ruled
the shooting was justified.
Chapman’s
cousin, Earl Lewis, welcomed The Counted, the Guardian’s project to monitor all
killings by police and law enforcement. He said increased transparency could
reduce unnecessary or unjustified fatalities. “Better data would put a check on
how some cities and their officers do business,” said Lewis.
Construction
workers who saw the confrontation between Chapman and Rankin told local
television reporters that the 18-year-old appeared to break free from an
attempt by the officer to handcuff him against a parked car.
One,
Leroy Woodman, told reporters at the scene Chapman was shot because he “took a
couple steps towards the cop like he was ready to fight”. A colleague of
Woodman’s, Paul Akey, said Chapman “came at” Rankin after the Taser was knocked
from Rankin’s hand and the officer stepped back. Akey said he believed Rankin’s
actions were justified.
“I
know my son,” said Sallie Chapman. “He would have been saying ‘Why are doing
this? I didn’t do anything.’ I know what his words would have been.”
Woodman
and Akey, who have since been interviewed by police investigators, declined or
ignored several requests for comment when reached by telephone and online
messages.
Police
have not given any explanation to Chapman’s mother, she said, and Walmart
management called the police to help remove her when she travelled to the store
demanding information about what he may have stolen and what happened.
“My
son is gone, and I just want to know why,” said Chapman. “Why can’t I see the
Walmart surveillance video? I’m his mother.”
The
police did not actively inform Chapman that her son had died. After being
unable to reach him on 22 April, and hearing media reports of an 18-year-old
killed at their local Walmart, she called 911. When she gave William’s name,
she was placed on hold and eventually told a detective would visit her home.
The detective told her William was dead.
Recordings
of live news bulletins from the scene on the day of the incident show that
Chapman’s body was still on the ground of the parking lot five hours after he was
killed. “It hurt,” said Lewis. “It was as if a dog had been hit in the street,
and eventually, later on, someone found the owner and told them to come pick it
up.”
Portsmouth
and state police have declined to confirm that Rankin was the officer responsible
for the shooting. Sean McGowan, the executive director of the Virginia division
of the Police Benevolent Association (PBA), told the Guardian Rankin was the
officer involved and the group had helped him obtain legal representation.
“Any
other questions you have, I would need to refer you to his attorney,” said
McGowan, who then declined to identify Rankin’s attorney. The officer’s legal
team did not respond to requests for comment that McGowan said he had conveyed
to them.
State
police investigators are expected to pass their completed inquiry on the
shooting to Stephanie Morales, Virginia’s commonwealth attorney, who will then
decide whether or not to put the case to a grand jury for a possible criminal
prosecution.
The
deaths of Chapman and Brown were the Portsmouth department’s first fatalities
since Rankin’s April 2011 shooting of Kirill Denyakin, a Kazakh cook. Denyakin
was shot 11 times by Rankin, who was responding to a 911 call about the
26-year-old aggressively banging at the door of a building where he was
staying.
Rankin
claimed he shot because Denyakin, who was drunk, charged at him while reaching
into the waistband of his jeans. The officer said he feared Denyakin would pull
out a weapon. No weapon was found.
A
grand jury declined to indict Rankin on criminal charges and a jury in a $22m
civil lawsuit brought by Denyakin’s family found in Rankin’s favor. Among 250
posts defending himself on a local newspaper website, Rankin wrote “22 mil wont
buy your boy back”, adding that most Americans could not hope to earn that in
an entire career, “let alone a habitual drunk working as a hotel cook”.
It
also emerged Rankin had in Facebook posts referred to his firearms case as
“Rankin’s box of vengeance” and said he would rather be dirtying his guns than
cleaning them. His Facebook avatar was once a print of a
photograph depicting a Serb left hanging from a lamppost by invading Nazi
forces in 1943.
When
he returned to work two months after the shooting, Rankin was restricted to
administrative duties for more than two and a half years. He was finally
allowed back on patrols on 1 March 2014. “I never thought seeing Steve get
ready for work would make me so nervous,” his girlfriend wrote in a post to
Facebook.