Before police officers fatally shot a 29-year-old in St. Paul, a man in the area heard a woman crying, “Help me, help me!” and “He’s trying to kill me!”
De’Andre Gatewood, who lives in the Dayton’s Bluff apartment building where police responded early Wednesday, said he also heard the woman saying, “The gun isn’t loaded. Put the gun down. Please don’t shoot.” The woman spoke directly to the man — who apparently was shot soon after — telling him, “Just put the gun down, put your hands up, don’t do anything,” Gatewood said Wednesday.
The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which is investigating the case, said that a firearm was found outside the apartment building where officers responded, in the 700 block of East Sixth Street, and spent shell casings were found inside an apartment.
Cordale Quinn Handy, 29, of Waukegan, Ill., died of multiple gunshot wounds, according to the BCA. Handy had two pending court cases from last fall — one for gun possession and the other for DWI — and both listed him as living at a St. Paul address.
A family member said Handy “was loved by many,” but relatives otherwise declined to comment.
Handy’s killing happens at a time of tension nationally and locally over police use of force, especially toward the African-American community.
“We hurt,” said Tyrone Terrill, president of the African-American Leadership Council. “For our community, it’s another black man that, regardless of the circumstances, has been killed.”
Terrill and other leaders told the community they are watching the investigation, they have trust that it will be conducted properly and urged calm while it is underway.
St. Paul Police Chief Todd Axtell noted in a statement that state law prevented him from discussing details of the case, but he said, “I do want you all to know that no one at the St. Paul Police Department takes pleasure in having to use deadly force. Officers do not choose situations such as the one that occurred this morning — the situations choose the officers. … Responding to domestic abuse calls is one of the most dangerous things we ask of our officers. What they experience and are exposed to affects them. And when guns are involved, the stakes are even higher.”
WHAT THE BCA, NEIGHBORS SAY HAPPENED
The incident began at 2:20 a.m. Wednesday when three St. Paul officers “responded to a report of a domestic situation involving physical violence” at the apartment building, according to the BCA.
“Officers encountered a man in the street, now identified as Handy, near the intersection of East Seventh and Sinnen streets,” the BCA statement continued. “At one point during the encounter two officers discharged their weapons, striking Handy.”
Paramedics pronounced Handy dead at the scene.
Before the shooting, a man who lives in the apartment building said he heard a loud voice in the hallway.
“He was arguing for a long time, real loud,” said the resident of the building, who declined to give his name.
The resident heard the man go downstairs, come back upstairs and then loudly arguing again in the hallway. Then the man went outside.
“A couple of minutes later I heard the shots, ‘Pow, pow, pow, pow, pow, pow,’ ” said the resident. “Six shots.”
Gatewood said he was in his apartment with the window open when he heard a woman’s voice asking for help. He and his roommate went to the window and Gatewood said he saw police already on the scene. The woman was standing behind them and asking them not to shoot, according to Gatewood.
Gatewood didn’t see the shooting itself, but said he was feeling “pretty shaken” by what he heard.
“I know there’s been a lot of heat on the police, as well as people of my skin color in general being targeted by police, so I just … want everybody to take a step back, know the facts, before anyone says anything about ‘This is what happened, this is how it happened,’ ” said Gatewood, who is African-American. “… I don’t want to jump to any conclusions myself just because I know that can also spark a lot of controversy, things like that, so I don’t want to be that guy to say, ‘This is exactly what happened.’ ”
Resident of apt building where shooting happened near. https://t.co/jNEinJ74Z3
— Mara Gottfried (@MaraGottfried) March 15, 2017
OFFICERS ON LEAVE, HANDY WAS DUE IN COURT
The three St. Paul police officers who were involved were put on administrative leave, which is standard in officer-involved shootings. The BCA said they would publicly name the officers and release additional information when the initial round of interviews with witnesses and those involved is complete.
Once the investigation is complete, the BCA will turn its findings over to the Ramsey County attorney’s office for review.
Tyrone Dixon, whose girlfriend lives in the apartment building, used to see Handy around and regarded him as calm and laid back.
“I know he was a good guy,” he said. “Down-to-earth guy, settled.”
Handy had two pending court cases; in both, he’d pleaded not guilty.
At 2:53 a.m. on Oct. 16, St. Paul officers responded to Cedar and Fourth streets on a report of a man with a gun. They found a man, later identified as Handy, who was “perfectly matching” the suspect’s description, according to the criminal complaint. Police searched him and found a gun in his pants — the .40-caliber had an extended 22-round magazine with 13 live rounds and a .40-caliber hollow point round in the chamber, the complaint said.
Handy was convicted in Illinois in 2005 of possession of a controlled substance and was ineligible to possess a gun in Minnesota, the complaint said.
In September, Handy was charged with driving while impaired after his vehicle was found stuck on a drainage culvert on a dead-end road near Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. A preliminary breath test found his blood-alcohol concentration was 0.147; the legal limit to drive in Minnesota is 0.08.
Handy also was charged with possession of a stolen firearm in 2012 in Waukegan, Ill., according to a Waukegan Daily Herald article. At that time, police told the Daily Herald that Handy was a gang member.
COMMUNITY MEMBERS LOOKING FOR ANSWERS
About 10 people gathered outside the police department’s Eastern District station on Wednesday night, saying they were looking for real answers about what happened.
“They’re shooting people with no explanation behind it, so if there’s something that was justified, it doesn’t make sense to me or to anyone else that we would have to wait an extended period of time before we can get any information on what actually happened,” said Danielle Swift, with Black Lives Matter St. Paul.
Kay Smith, whose husband was fatally shot by St. Paul police officers last year, joined the group and said she refuses “to let this case be handled like my case was handled.” A grand jury decided not to file charges against the officers in Jaffort Smith’s killing.
“Our family was treated very badly from the very beginning because of the way this was told to the media by the police and by the BCA initially, and I’m not going to let that happen to this family,” Smith said.
Sarah Horner contributed to this report.