Jamie Billingham

He picked an air rifle up off the shelf in a Walmart and carried it round the shop while he talked on the phone. The shop sells them. Ohio is an open-carry state. The police shot John Crawford almost the moment they came through the door. Beavercreek, Ohio. 5 August 2014. He was twenty-two. He was in the Walmart. He had picked up an unpackaged MK-177 air rifle from the store's own sporting goods section and he was walking round with it while he shopped and talked on his mobile, the way anyone handles a thing they are thinking about buying. A customer, Ronald Ritchie, rang 911 and reported that a man was pointing a rifle at people in the store. Officers came in and shot him. The store's surveillance video was later released, and here is what it shows. He never aimed it at anyone. He is on the phone. He is holding it down. The officers fire almost immediately on entering and seeing him. After the video came out, Ritchie walked his account back. His words: "At no point did he shoulder the rifle and point it at somebody." He maintained that Crawford had been waving it around. He was never charged with anything. A grand jury declined to indict the officer who fired, Sean Williams, on any count. In 2017 the Justice Department declined to bring federal charges and he returned to full duty. Now hold the three facts that make this unbearable. The item was merchandise. It came off the shelf of the shop he was standing in, which sells it, to anybody who walks in. Ohio is an open-carry state. Carrying a firearm openly there is lawful with or without a licence. Even if the thing in his hands had been a real rifle he had brought in himself, he would have been breaking no law. He was on the phone. He was mid-conversation with somebody when it happened. And there is a detail after his death that you should know, because almost nobody does. Tasha Thomas, the woman he had been seeing, was taken in and questioned by a detective immediately afterwards, while she still did not know he was dead. Reporting by the Guardian describes the detective threatening her with jail during that interview. She died in a car crash in Dayton on 1 January 2015.