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March 10, 2015
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March 11, 2015
Six months after a Houma teen was fatally shot by Terrebonne Parish deputy, prosecutors are preparing to bring the case before a grand jury, whose members will likely have the final say as to whether the officer involved acted appropriately
Cameron Tillman, a 14-year-old Ellender Memorial High freshman, died Sept. 23, 2014, after opening the door of an abandoned house where he, his older brother and other teens had gathered.
The sheriff’s deputy, 7-year-veteran Preston Norman, has told superiors and investigators that after he and another deputy answered a report of people with guns inside the house, Tillman opened the door with what appeared to be a gun in his hand. Norman told them he feared for his life and opened fire.
A Louisiana State Police investigation of the shooting is now complete, District Attorney Joe Waitz Jr. said.
“I am aware of the report, and that it finds the evidence is consistent with the account given by Deputy Preston Norman,” said Waitz, who is not required to present the case to a grand jury but is doing so out of respect for the teen’s family and “an abundance of caution.”
“With all the anti-police events that have taken place across the country I want to make sure that it is thoroughly investigated by an independent body,” Waitz said. “It is a horrible tragedy, and I want to make sure that we go to every extent. I am doing everything I possibly can do.”
Authorities closely involved with the case say the investigation’s findings are consistent with Waitz’s statement.
Months of interviews and examination of documents related to the case by The Times reveal new details that support those interpretations.
• People who live close by recalled a group of youths “playing” with guns outside the abandoned ranch-style house earlier that evening.
• Norman reportedly told investigators that he not only knocked on the side door of the abandoned house at 50 Kirkglen Loop, but also verbally announced his presence.
• When Tillman opened the door, which leads to a carport, the hand with which he held the simulated pistol was allegedly fully extended.
• Public service logs from more than one agency show that medical help for Tillman was requested within seconds of the fatal shots being fired.
• The four shots that were fired entered Tillman’s body from the front.
Terrebonne Sheriff Jerry Larpenter has described the event as a tragic accident, and has consistently stood by the version of events initially provided by Norman, who has been on modified assignment since the shooting.
“As I have said before, this was a tragic incident involving a young man I have heard nothing but good things about,” Larpenter said Sunday. He would not discuss the State Police investigation, however. “There is a need to bring it to the grand jury without discussing it with the media, so that there is a fair shake for the young man and his family, and the police officers.”
TROUBLED HOUSE
Various accounts of the Tillman shooting based on what witnesses have told investigators, and which therefore will likely play a role in what the grand jury sees and hears, are for the most part consistent.
Tillman, his 18-year-old brother Andre and at least four friends were at 50 Kirkglen Loop late in the afternoon of Sept. 23. At least one person told police that the youths were playing with what appeared to be handguns out in the street, though they didn’t know if the weapons were real or not.
The subject of an incomplete succession after the death of its owner, the red-brick, ranch-style home had a reputation after its vacancy as a hang-out for criminals, drug users and neighborhood kids.
It has been the scene of multiple domestic dispute calls, five drug law violations, four incidents involving suspicious persons and four thefts. Three warrant arrests were effected over a period of years, two disturbances were reported involving a weapon, one shooting was reported, as well as a rape, an aggravated assault and an aggravated battery.
Interviews with Andre Tillman and his friends indicate that to the group of teens gathered Sept. 23 the house was nothing more than a haven away from the disapproving eyes of adults.
A woman on the block took the potential for trouble seriously that day; she called the Sheriff’s Office and said young men with guns had entered the abandoned house.
“Look ma’am, they got about six or seven young boys walking up and down the street with guns,” the female caller stated, who went on to say they entered the house on Kirkglen.
Deputy Andrew Lewis was dispatched to the call and Preston Norman backed him up; the address was mistakenly given as 51 Kirkglen Loop and, after talking with residents there, the deputies realized that the call was for 50 Kirkglen.
According to the best information currently available, Norman entered the open carport, taking his place to the right of the door leading into the house. Both Lewis and Norman are believed to have had their weapons un-holstered, which law enforcement officers interviewed for this story said would be proper procedure for a call involving the presence of firearms and the related danger.
DEADLY TURN
Lewis was near the carport entrance, Norman to the rear, and it was he who knocked on the door. New information reveals that Norman said he identified himself – forcefully – as a police officer when he knocked.
Andre Tillman has stated in interviews that in the past, friends of the teens would do the same thing – knock on the door and identify themselves as police officers – and it is that history that may have caused the events of Sept. 23 to take a deadly turn.
According to accounts of statements by Norman and witnesses, the deputy saw the door open quickly and a person – later identified
Wyteika Tillman as Tillman – stepping out with what appeared to be a semi-automatic pistol in his hand, arm fully extended. The scenario, if true, would be consistent with the opinion that Tillman was responding to what he perceived as horse-playing friends. Tillman allegedly turned his body and the extended gun-arm directly toward Norman – whom he might not have seen until that moment. The officer fired four times. A bullet count would show – if accounts are correct – that 11 rounds would have been left unfired in Norman’s .40-cali ber magazine.
“My brother was clowning,” Andre Tillman said in an interview, a few days after the shooting, in which past scenarios involving play with friends were mentioned.
Three of the bullets fired were retrieved from Tillman’s body during an autopsy held at the Jefferson Parish medical examiner’s office. The fourth bullet was found embedded in a wall. It had passed through Tillman’s shoulder and into the door, which was behind him. Specifically, autopsy records show that one bullet entered just above the pelvic area, another in the center of the chest, near the ribcage and to the left. Another was found in the thoracic cavity.
Multiple accounts say that Norman initiated first aid as other officers arrived, until medics took over. But the efforts were for naught.
REALISTIC BB GUN
None of the available accounts state whether Norman told Tillman to drop the gun. Law enforcement officers from various organizations have said in interviews, however, that this would not be unusual if an officer was faced with a life-and-death decision requiring immediate action.
All available accounts indicate that nobody – not even medical or law enforcement personnel who had worked overseas in war zones – knew the gun was a fake until later, after observing it on the carport floor where it had reportedly been dropped.
The decision by Waitz to have the case brought before the grand jury has won praise from some community leaders.
“That shows the experience of our sheriff and the district attorney, to let it continue further,” said Terrebonne Parish Councilman John Navy. “We should exhaust every opportunity to make sure all means of justice are served. No matter what the conclusion is, we should let it go as far as it can go.”
Waitz has indicated the grandjury could hear the case by the end of March.
MIDST OF A MAELSTROM
Presuming the grand jury clears Norman of wrongdoing in the case, there is still the potential of a civil lawsuit being brought against Norman and the Sheriff’s Office. Monroe attorney Carol Powell-Lexing is representing Tillman’s family.
On at least two occasions, when warrants for evidence were sought by investigators, Powell-Lexing had advised family members not to cooperate, and not to speak with authorities, according to law enforcement interviews over the past two months.
A Kirkglen Loop woman, who asked that her name not be used in this story because of fears that she might be further involved, confirmed authorities had tried to contact her regarding a 911 call she made.
“Cameron’s mama told me not to talk to them, that her attorney had said not to,” the woman stated in an interview Sunday.
Powell-Lexing denies that there was any intentional blocking of interviews, but attributes any difficulties to scheduling conflicts.
The timing of Tillman’s shooting has caused officials to tread delicately. It occurred within two months of the Ferguson, Missouri, death of Michael Brown, a controversial incident that galvanized national awareness of issues related to police shootings and other custodial deaths.
The void of detailed official information while State Police conducted their investigation into the Tillman case persisted in Houma as the nation struggled with the aftermath of deadly police interactions in New York, Wisconsin and other states. In New York, the ambush-style murder of two police officers, allegedly in retaliation for the police chokehold death of Eric Garner, brought new intensity to a national debate already made shrill by the Ferguson riots.
In Houma, the response was placid; prayer vigils outnumbered the handful of public protests, which at all times were orderly and peaceful.
Councilman Navy is among community leaders who credit residents with their responses.
Underlying racial issues in other places, he surmises, have resulted in explosions of raw, negative emotion when a questionable police incident occurs; because of the underlying issues accusing fingers have been pointed at government and law enforcement in general.
NO RACIAL ROLE SEEN
Criticism of Norman’s decision to fire was at first based on questions about whether Tillman had a gun or what was perceived as one in his hand at all.
What Navy now hears from constituents is concern over the number of shots fired.
“Here, racial issues haven’t played a role,” said Navy who, like Tillman and Norman, is African-American. “In the Tillman case one individual, the officer, made a decision that was perhaps not the best decision to make. If an individual has made a decision you don’t condemn a whole force. A whole police force did not do this.”
Waitz tried unsuccessfully to contact Wyteika Tillman, the teen’s mother, on Monday to tell her what he had learned, and that the case is headed for the grand jury.
He also focused in an interview on what he sees as a huge unaddressed problem, that of pellet guns that look so real they can easily be mistaken for the real thing. “I am surprised that has not been addressed in class action lawsuits,” Waitz said. “We have heard of many cases like this tragedy, where a pellet gun has been the cause of mistakes and of tremendous pain.”
Pain is what Tillman’s family members say is all they have had since Sept. 23.
Reached by telephone late Monday by The Times, Wyteika Tillman said her mother, Beverly Shepherd, with whom Cameron Tillman primarily lived, is still ill. Her son Andre, she said, bitterly blames himself for his brother’s death.
Claims that her family’s legal counsel had urged non-cooperation with the investigation, Wyteika Tillman said, are not entirely correct.
Powell-Lexing, she said, had merely advised family members not talk to authorities without her presence.
The wounds inflicted by her son’s death, she said, are still raw. When told that Waitz is preparing to present the case to a grand jury, Wyteika Tillman said what she has experienced so far has eroded any trust in the system.
“Local grand juries always go with what is presented by the prosecutor,” she said. “I don’t trust a DA and an investigative team who work together. I have seen too much. I don’t know what to feel.”
Powell-Lexing said Monday that “it is always a good thing for a district attorney to bring a case to the grand jury.” She plans to speak with Waitz, and hopes to learn more about what troopers found during the course of their investigation.
It is still difficult, Wyteika Tillman said, to see beyond anger.
“I am angry. I am numb, very, very, numb, when I think of how many times he shot my child,” she said. “My child did not live a violent life, to be killed so violently. He was 14 and was taken out for what? I don’t sleep. My son doesn’t sleep. Cameron’s friends don’t sleep. How dare you kill him. He didn’t deserve that.” E3
‘My child did not live a violent life, to be killed so violently. He was 14 and was taken out for what? I don’t sleep. My son doesn’t sleep…. How dare you kill him. He didn’t deserve that.’
Teen’s mother suspicious of authorities’ investigation
The house at 50 Kirkglen Loop in the Village East subdivision where 14-year-old Cameron Tillman was killed last year is now boarded up and covered with memorial graffiti. Tthe makeshift memorial of candles and balloons that persisted for months is gone.
Cameron Tillman
Wyteika Tillman (above) shares memories of her son Cameron days after he was killed. This pellet gun (bottom left) is a manufacturer’s photo of the type Cameron Tillman allegedly brandished when confronted by a deputy (bottom right) in the carport of an abandoned Village East home. The door is the one the deputy is said to have knocked on and from which the teen emerged.
