Cops Shoot Black Walmart Customer For Picking Up Toy Gun (Pictures)

By the time we made it to our destination, just a block away, word had already spread of what happened. There was a shooting at Walmart. Other store employees didn’t know the specifics, but a man was at Walmart and police had shot him.

As it turns out, John Crawford, the man shot dead by police was killed after doing nothing more than picking up a toy gun in the store.

Crawford, 22, was identified, in part by the mother of his child, who he was on the phone with at the time police shot him dead.

That woman, LeeCee Johnson, said Crawford went to the area to visit family members.

“We was just talking. He said he was at the video games playing videos and he went over there by the toy section where the toy guns were. And the next thing I know, he said ‘It’s not real,’ and the police start shooting and they said ‘Get on the ground,’ but he was already on the ground because they had shot him,” she said, adding: “And I could hear him just crying and screaming. I feel like they shot him down like he was not even human.”

Beavercreek Police Chief Dennis Evers refused to answer any questions about what happened, except to say that his officers “acted appropriately.”

Johnson said “He had a lot of family members that cared about him, and his kids. They’re not going to be able to know their dad. They’re too young — only 4 months and a year old — to even know how wonderful he was to them.”

She said that contrary to what Chief Evers said, the police did not act appropriately. She and Crawford’s family are now demanding justice. They’ve contacted civil rights organizations because they believe the shooting was clearly not justified.

“I hope the police get fired and sent to jail, because (the officer who fired) didn’t do his job. He didn’t treat him like a human being. He didn’t treat him someone at Walmart looking at toy guns,” Johnson said.

Even Beavercreek Police and the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, refused to say whether Crawford was armed with a toy or a real weapon. But people on the scene alternatively say that he had bought a toy gun at Walmart, picked one up, or bought an air rifle. No witnesses that we talked to said that he had aimed the toy or air rifle at anyone. The vast majority said he had done nothing other than pick up a toy gun while casually talking on the phone.  MOREHERE