Jessica Hernandez, the 17-year-old Denver girl who was shot by police after she tried to hit them with a stolen car, reportedly had four bullet wounds.
The trajectory of those wounds, however, is what is causing a stir around the case of Jessica Hernandez.
The Jessica Hernandez shooting happened on January 26th, quite soon after the racially charged shootings in Missouri and New York.
Police say they confronted Jessica Hernandez, and some other teens, in a stolen car in a Denver alley.
Denver police Chief Robert White said that the officers told the teens several times to get out of the vehicle. Then, Officers Gabriel Jordan and Daniel Greene fired after Hernandez drove toward one of them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGQ07VGLPj8
The autopsy report from the Denver medical examiner’s office said Jessica Hernandez also had marijuana and a small amount of alcohol in her system
However, the shooting of Jessica Hernandez quickly caused protests and calls for investigation into the incident.
Jessica Hernandez‘s family attorney, Qusair Mohamedbhai, said the findings in regards to the trajectory of the bullet wounds challenge the account given by Denver police officers.
Mohamedbhai said in a statement, “These facts undermine Denver Police Department’s claim that Jessie was driving at the officers as they shot her. The wound path and trajectory of the bullet that likely killed Jessica Hernandez undermines the version of events as indicated by the Denver Police Department.”
But, Dan Montgomery, a retired Colorado police chief and use-of-force expert, said conclusions about the Jessica Hernandez shooting shouldn’t be drawn from the autopsy report alone.
He said that the officers’ positioning, their tactics in approaching the car, whether they put themselves in danger, and what they have to say about what happened, should all be considered as a total package when truly trying to find out what happened to Jessica Hernandez on that fateful night.
“It’s like putting a giant jigsaw puzzle together, and we’ve got two tiny little pieces right now,” Montgomery said. “More are going to start coming into place.”
I guess time will tell if the shooting of Jessica Hernandez was her own fault, the police officers’ fault, or a little bit of both.
What do you think?