After mistaking him for a burglar and shooting him twice, police charged Lyndo Jones with evading arrest, shackled him to his Dallas hospital bed and blocked family members from visiting him for six days.
At first, Mesquite police erroneously called Jones, 31, a “burglary suspect” because of a 911 caller who’d spotted him in a parking lot on November 8 while he was struggling to turn off the alarm in his truck. Police say officer Derick Wiley arrived around 7 p.m. to investigate the possible burglary and shot Jones in a “confrontation” that ensued. A press release the Mesquite Police Department issued afterward offered no details on the confrontation but seemed to endow Jones with almost superhuman strength — claiming it took three officers to subdue the unarmed, 130-pound man with two fresh gunshot wounds. After police learned the vehicle indeed belonged to Jones, they still called him a suspect and charged him with evading arrest.
“They shot this guy because of a mistake and then chained him to a hospital bed away from people who care about him, people who are wondering whether he’s going to survive.”
Authorities barred Jones’ family from visiting him at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, where doctors treated him this month, because of his misdemeanor charge. At one point, deputies escorted Jones’ attorney, Justin Moore, out of the hospital after he tried to stop Mesquite police investigators from questioning Jones alone.
According to Moore, Jones’ family didn’t even get to see him until six days after the shooting, when police dropped the misdemeanor charge against Jones just as he was being discharged from the hospital.
“They shot this guy because of a mistake and then chained him to a hospital bed away from people who care about him, people who are wondering whether he’s going to survive,” Moore told the Observer. “Victims of police brutality and their families should not be treated this way.”
Mesquite police won’t say much about the “confrontation” that led to Jones’ shooting, but in a press conference with reporters last week, Lieutenant Brian Parrish blamed Jones for not giving the officer who shot him “ample opportunity to start an investigation.”
Moore, however, says that in Jones’ version of events, Officer Wiley approached him with his gun drawn, ordered him out of his truck and then fired when he got out of the vehicle. Moore says Jones blacked out from the pain sometime after that and doesn’t even remember the second gunshot, let alone any subsequent struggle with other officers. Moore told the Observer that police were wearing body cameras, and that Jones and his attorneys were scheduled this week to review footage from the shooting, which hasn’t been publicly released. The Observer requested the video under open record laws.
For full story visit: https://www.texasobserver.org/lyndo-jones-police-shooting-dallas-unarmed-hospital/