Exclusive: Cop in Fatal Shooting of Ex-Marine Kenneth Chamberlain ID’d, Sued in 2008 Racism Case
In a broadcast exclusive, we reveal the name of the police officer who allegedly killed 68-year-old Kenneth Chamberlain, the retired African-American Marine who was shot dead in his own home in White Plains, New York, in November after he inadvertently triggered his medical alert pendant. Documented in audio recordings, the White Plains police reportedly used a racial slur, burst through Chamberlain’s door, tasered him, then shot him dead. "The last time I actually really saw my father, other than the funeral, was at the hospital, with his eyes wide open, his tongue hanging out his mouth, and two bullet holes in his chest," said Kenneth Chamberlain, Jr. "And I’m staring at my father, wondering, 'What happened?'"
The alleged shooter, Officer Anthony Carelli, is due in court later this month in an unrelated 2008 police brutality case. He is accused of being the most brutal of a group of officers who allegedly beat two arrestees of Jordanian descent and called them "rag heads." We speak to Gus Dimopoulos, attorney for Jerry and Sal Hatter. "We allege that the police officers, while in the custody of the White Plains Police Department back at the station, you know, severely beat Jerry while being restrained by handcuffs. They hit him in the face with a nightstick, they kicked, they punched, they punched him, and then essentially charged him with a crime," Dimopoulos said.
Fatal shooting of ex-Marine by White Plains police must be explained
A routine ambulance call morphed into a senseless killing
Something went terribly, fatally wrong when police responded to the Winbrook Houses in White Plains on Nov. 19, and the facts in the death of Kenneth Chamberlain are long overdue.
The basic outline of the episode is horrendous.
Chamberlain, 68, was a Marine Corps veteran and former correction officer who had a medical-alert system in his apartment because he suffered from a serious heart condition.
He apparently had activated the apparatus unintentionally as he slept.
Unable to arouse him using a loudspeaker that was part of the system, the alert service called for medical assistance, which arrived in pre-dawn darkness, along with police.
Less than an hour later, Chamberlain was dead, shot twice by a cop who, the Daily News reveals, was previously named in a federal civil rights suit stemming from an alleged nightstick beating. He fired after the responders tried to stun Chamberlain into submission and shot beanbags at him.
Unexplained is why the cops forced their way into Chamberlain’s apartment after he told them through the door that he was okay.
Unexplained is why the officers escalated a mission of mercy into a violent confrontation in which, perhaps, Chamberlain resorted to wielding a knife.
Unexplained is why one of them pulled the trigger while facing a man who was so infirm he had trouble walking distances.
Unexplained is why Westchester Country District Attorney Janet DiFiore is only now, almost five months later, empaneling a grand jury.
The probe’s apparently slow pace is fueling doubts, and so is the poisonous factor of race. Chamberlain was black, and one of the responders was recorded as saying, “I don’t give a f--k, n----r, open the door.”
Sources identify White Plains cop Anthony Carelli as triggerman in fatal shooting of retired Marine
Exclusive: At center of controversial Nov. 19 shooting of Kenneth Chamberlain Sr., cop also to go to trial in unrelated brutality and racism case
The Daily News has cracked a tightly kept secret, revealing for the first time the identity of the cop who fatally shot a former Marine almost five months ago.
He is White Plains Officer Anthony Carelli.
In a shocking twist, The News has learned that Carelli, who killed retired Marine Kenneth Chamberlain Sr. on Nov. 19, is due in court later this month in a federal police brutality case.
Carelli is one of six cops accused in a $10 million civil suit brought by twin brothers who say he battered them during a disorderly-conduct arrest outside the Black Bear Saloon in downtown White Plains during Memorial Day weekend 2008.
AP; Courtesy Kenneth Chamberlain Jr.
Clockwise from top left: David Chong, Janet DiFiore, Kenneth Chamberlain Sr. and Thomas Roach.
The brothers say Carelli beat Jereis Hatter with a police baton, causing head and eye injuries, while he was handcuffed to a pole in the booking area of the police station.
“He hit me in my eye with a nightstick and then he kicked me in my nuts,” Jereis Hatter told The News on Wednesday. “He shouldn’t be a cop.”
All charges against the Hatter brothers were dismissed last August by a judge who complained that testimony about the boozy night in question resembled a “Quentin Tarantino script” because everyone had a different version of what happened.
No comments:
Post a Comment