Authorities filed an emergency request to Facebook, successfully petitioning them to suspend Gaines’ account.
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In fact, Gaines was live streaming much of the standoff to Facebook and Instagram but police said they petitioned the social media sites to deactivate her profiles “in order to preserve the integrity of the negotiation process with her and for the safety of our personnel, her child”.
“Gaines was posting video of the operation, and followers were encouraging her not to comply with negotiators’ requests that she surrender peacefully”, a spokesperson for the Baltimore County Police Department said.
Gaines’ name has also been included in the “Say Her Name” campaign, which seeks to call attention to police violence against black women.
However Gaines, who had a history of impulsive and irrational behavior, refused to leave the apartment and barricaded herself inside along with her 5-year-old-son.
“They trying to kill us”, her son says. An officer fired one round at Gaines and she fired back, according to the department.
The cops also tried to carry out a separate arrest warrant for Gaines, who failed to show up to court after she was charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest during a tense March 10 traffic stop.
NEWS BRIEF The officer-involved shooting death of Korryn Gaines, a 23-year-old black woman, is bringing attention to women killed by law enforcement and the threats officers face after a turbulent month of shooting incidents. Authorities said she was armed with a 12-gauge pistol grip shotgun that was legally purchased a year ago and toward the end of the negotiations pointed it directly at an officer and said, “If you don’t leave, I’m going to kill you”. In turn, she fired several rounds back at us.
Gaines’s reported aggressive behavior surrounding her arrest in March, an agitated visit she paid – and video-recorded – to a police station in April, and her refusal to put down her gun during five hours of cajoling from trained negotiators and her boyfriend on Monday are indicators of a possibly manic state.
The cardboard tag read: “Any government official who compromises this pursuit of happiness and right to travel will be held criminally responsible and fined, as this is a natural right and freedom”.
While Baltimore County Police are implementing a body camera program, it’s still in the early stages. It comes amid heightened tension across the U.S. over the shootings of black people by police, and the killing of five officers ambushed by a gunman in Dallas last month.
Police should have “taken a different approach and use every tool available which is us”.
Upon arriving to serve the warrants, officers heard the voices of a male, female and children inside the apartment.
Her son was shot in a limb and was in hospital with non-life threatening injuries.
“I’m going to kill you”. “We fired again at her, striking and killing her”.
“Gaines was posting video of the operation as it unfolded”, Johnson said.
It is not clear if the boy was shot by his mother or by police.
The department did not release the names or races of the officers involved, who were placed on administrative leave. And the trauma associated with lead poisoning “creates too much of a burden on a community”, she said.
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After the shooting, police also released a report showing that officers had been called to Gaines’s apartment on June 28 for a report of a domestic dispute between Courtney and Gaines. Her son, Kodi, was wounded but will survive, though who can imagine the psychological trauma he will endure.
