Updated News: Kenneth Chamberlain, Sr., an ex-Marine, murdered by White Plains, NY police officer
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.
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.”
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.
Jereis (Jerry) Hatter and Salameh (Sal) Hatter, 27, claim Carelli was
the most brutal of the officers who beat and kicked them while they were
handcuffed, calling them “rag heads.” Their parents are Jordanian
immigrants.
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.
