The situation before Cordale Handy was fatally shot by St. Paul police officers was not a domestic violence incident but rather his girlfriend trying to get a gun away from him for his own safety, a witness said Thursday.
When police arrived early Wednesday, Handy’s girlfriend and a friend of the couple pleaded with officers to understand that the gun was unloaded. He had fired the gun until it was empty into his apartment wall beforehand, the girlfriend told their friend. Building residents said rounds also went into an apartment below.
“(Responding officers) asked, ‘Does he have a gun?’ ” said the friend, who asked not to be identified for safety reasons. “I said, ‘Yes, the gun is unloaded.’ They proceeded to go after him.” The woman said she and Handy’s girlfriend followed.
“I lost my voice screaming that the gun was unloaded and saying, ‘Don’t hurt him, don’t hurt him,’ ” the woman said.
She said she saw a gun’s flash and heard six shots on a Dayton’s Bluff street near their apartment building. Two officers had fired and Handy was hit, according to the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.
The woman, who said she was about 20 feet away, couldn’t see whether Handy still had the gun when he was shot. “I believe he was told to drop the gun,” she said.
CALL WAS ABOUT ‘A DOMESTIC SITUATION’
Initial emergency-radio traffic posted by MN Police Clips indicated that officers were responding to a report about 2:20 a.m. in the 700 block of East Sixth Street with a caller hearing a “female screaming for help” and noting that “it sounds physical.” The BCA, which is investigating the case, said the call was categorized as “a domestic situation involving physical violence.”
Handy’s friend said his girlfriend was screaming for help in the hallway, but it was for someone to assist her with getting the gun away from him.
“We knew if the cops showed up, he was dead,” the woman said.
She said she last saw Handy holding the gun in the apartment building hallway. Handy was not acting violently toward her or his girlfriend, the woman said, but she could tell something was wrong.
“When I walked into the hallway, he had the gun in his hand, his eyes were glossed over, and he was not coherent,” she said. “It was like he thought someone was trying to kill him; that’s why I think he was maybe hallucinating.”
The woman had never seen Handy have more than a drink or smoke a joint, but she said he may have been under the influence of something else Wednesday.
“He was not a bad person and, if he was using drugs, that does not give them the right to hurt him,” she said. “They should have Tased him. I’m not saying the officers are wrong, either. He had a gun and I get that. … Something needs to change with both the people and the police. It all needs to change or this world won’t work.”
Before they were in the hallway, Handy had shot into the wall of the apartment where he lived with his girlfriend, though not at her, Handy’s girlfriend told the woman.
Another woman who lives in the building, who didn’t know the couple, said she heard loud talking in the hallway, but not fighting.
“He was really hyped about something,” the resident said. “… He was like, ‘They’re trying to kill me.’ They were talking about a gun, but then she said, ‘When I got back, the gun was empty or the gun was unloaded.’ … I think she was maybe trying to calm him down.”
Meanwhile, another resident said she heard “yelling and it sounded like something being slammed around.”
“It sounded like a bad enough fight I was going to call the cops, but it turned out someone already had,” she said.
A man who had his window open in the building has said he heard a woman calling for help outside, saying, “He’s trying to kill me.” He also heard a woman saying, “The gun isn’t loaded. Put the gun down. Please don’t shoot.”
The BCA said Wednesday that when officers arrived, they encountered a man — now identified as Handy — near East Seventh and Sinnen streets. “At one point during the encounter two officers discharged their weapons, striking Handy,” according to a BCA statement.
Paramedics pronounced Handy dead at the scene. The BCA said crime-scene personnel found a firearm outside the apartment building and spent shell casings in the apartment.
Handy was not eligible to possess a gun in Minnesota because he was convicted in Illinois in 2005 of possession of a controlled substance, according to a criminal complaint filed in October. Early Oct. 16, police had found Handy in downtown St. Paul early one morning with 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. He had pleaded not guilty.
Handy, who was originally from Waukegan, Ill., moved to St. Paul last year for a new life and was working at the Salvation Army, his mother told the media in Illinois on Thursday.
“He didn’t deserve to die,” said Kim Handy Jones, according to the Lake County News-Sun. “I don’t think no child deserves to die in that manner. I just don’t believe that in my heart. There’s other places that you could shoot people and not kill them; not that shooting is right.”
MORE INFORMATION WANTED
Community groups said in a statement Thursday that the killing of Handy came while he was “experiencing a medical crisis.”
Representatives of community organizations have “met with witnesses and others with direct knowledge of the incident,” the statement continued. “Despite allegations in the media, this was not an incident of domestic violence. Further, we have learned information that appears to indicate that Mr. Handy was unarmed at the time of the shooting and, thus, the shooting was not justified.”
The groups — Communities United Against Police Brutality, Justice for Marcus Golden, Blue Lies Matter, St. Paul for Justice and Black Lives Matter St. Paul — said they are “not going to accept an inadequate investigation into this incident.”
They said that law enforcement needs to release more information “to allow the community to determine for ourselves whether the shooting was justified.”
The BCA will be releasing additional information, including the names of the officers involved, when initial interviews have been completed, according to a spokesman. When the investigation is complete, they will present it to the Ramsey County attorney’s office for review about whether the officers’ actions were justified.
Steve Linders, a St. Paul police spokesman, said Thursday that “it would be wrong for the St. Paul Police Department to comment, speculate or say anything that could jeopardize the integrity of the investigation,” though he said they “absolutely understand there are questions about what happened.”
“We’re confident the BCA will conduct a thorough and objective investigation, determine the facts and share information with the public and St. Paul Police Department as soon as they’re able to do so,” Linders said. “In the meantime, we will continue to support our officers and keep everyone touched by the incident in our thoughts and prayers.”