Her 20-year-old son, Kouren Rodney Thomas, was killed early Sunday after a 911 caller complained of “hoodlums” in his neighborhood.
Advertisement
The AP notes that police released the 911 recording that came shortly before the shooting in which the male caller tells the dispatcher that he’s “locked and loaded” and ready to go outside to confront the “hoodlums”.
She said the young men had arrived at the house party to find it had spilled outside, and chose to leave after about 15 minutes because the friend had heard there were no girls there. There was no need for Copley to fire any shots at him. “If I were you, I’d send PD as quickly as possible”.
The dispatcher pressed for more information: Who’s been shot, how badly are they injured – and where, exactly, is the victim?
“Traditional laws are that if you’re in your house you don’t have to retreat”, she told The Huffington Post.
“Well, I don’t know if they were shot or not, Ma’am”, he told the dispatcher.
Kouren-Rodney Bernard Thomas, 20, was killed outside 3536 Single Leaf Lane early Sunday.
Cops received 911 calls from Copley’s house before and after the shooting.
Thomas was walking with a friend, David Walker, to their parked vehicle down the street when he was shot, said Butler-Thomas, who found out about the incident from her son’s friends and witnesses at the scene.
His mother, Munyir Simone Butler Thomas told New York Daily News she moved her family from the Harlem neighborhood of New York to North Carolina because she felt the city had become too unsafe for her children. Copley informed the dispatcher that he and his neighbors were “locked and loaded” and going to “secure” their neighborhood.
If convicted, Copley could face the death penalty.
Justin Bamberg, a lawyer hired by the Thomas family, identified the caller as Copley and said his claims were reminiscent of George Zimmerman, who fatally shot black teenager Trayvon Martin in Florida in 2012.
“They do have firearms, and I’m trying to protect myself and my family”, he said, noting that he had fired a warning shot that might have hit someone. The suspect, Chad Cameron Copley, has been charged with murder.
In the second call, Copley admitted he fired his weapon, but said he wasn’t sure if he had shot anyone. The man said he fired a warning shot to scare the people away, but the shot hit someone. “Please send PD”, he says. “I can’t bring him back”.
But Thomas is far from the first young black man to be killed by a white vigilante who made a decision to take matters into his own hands. The terminology that the shooter used when he called 911 to describe everybody, his mannerisms, his tone. Walker also denied Copley’s claims about the presence of firearms.
“Now it makes me even more scared, because I have two more sons that walk home from work or drive places”. “Just kinda – I don’t know, it sounds borderline hate crime”. He loves pink and all I want to do is send him off well.
A white homeowner is being held without bond after police say he shot and killed an African-American man outside his home last weekend.
Advertisement
As for whether Copley was acting in a neighborhood watch capacity, Hourigan said there were many such groups in the community, but she is “unsure if that one is a registered group or not”.
