Parents call police to aid psychotic teen, cops show up and kill him

Friday, January 17, 2014 by: J. D. Heyes
Tags: psychotic teen, police brutality, homocide

(NaturalNews) No doubt, when the parents of 18-year-old Keith Vidal called local police to provide some assistance to the North Carolina couple, they never in their wildest imaginations believed that things would turn out the way they did - with them having to bury their son.

According to The Daily Caller, the two are in shock following the gunning down of Keith in their home:

The family called police because they were worried about their son... who is schizophrenic and suffers from depression, according to local news. Vidal, armed with a small screwdriver, was apparently having a psychotic episode. Mark Wilsey, Vidal's father, called the authorities to help deal with the situation.

Reports said an officer from the Brunswick County Sheriff's Office, as well as another from the Boiling Spring Lakes Police Department, responded to the home soon after. Eventually, TheDC reported, a third cop from the Southport Police Department came into the home as well and ordered the others to use Tasers to subdue Vidal. According to Wilsey, Vidal was pinned on the ground by two of the officers when a third said, "We don't have time for this," then shot and killed the young man:

Vidal had just turned 18, and weighed a mere 90 pounds. He couldn't have hurt anyone with the screwdriver, and had no history of violence, according to family and friends.

'We called for help and they killed my son'

"There was no reason to shoot this kid," said Wilsey in a statement. "They killed my son in cold blood. We called for help and they killed my son."

After her son was killed, Vidal's mother suffered a mental breakdown and had to be treated by medical staff.

The New Brunswick County Sheriff's Office told The Daily Caller that no statement has been released yet, but officials, including the district attorney and state investigators, are examining the shooting.

A similar thing happened to a Georgia family in October, also reported by TheDC:

A Georgia family claims they called 911 in order to get medical help for a member of the family suffering an adverse reaction to diabetes medication.

But instead of an ambulance, the dispatcher sent two police officers, who proceeded to shoot and kill the 43-year-old Jack Lamar Roberson in front of his mother and fiance.

"They just came in and shot him," said Roberson's fiance, Alicia Herron, in a statement to First Coast News. "He didn't say nothing, the police didn't say nothing, anything, it was like a silent movie. You couldn't hear anything, all you could hear were the gun shots go off and I seen them going into his body and he just fell down."

Cops becoming more militarized in general

First Coast News said the officers claimed the shooting was justified because they were being threatened:

The Waycross Police Department said officers responded to the home after receiving a report of an attempted suicide and while en route, they were updated that the man had become combative. The Police Chief Tony Tanner said Roberson lunged at the officers with two items he described as weapons and said Roberson ignored requests to drop the items.

But his mother says her son didn't have any weapons in his hands.

"If you're any type of man you'll come to me and you'll tell me why you stood up there and told a lie. Two knives, we don't own two decent knives," she told the paper.

Sadly, deadly use of force by police appears to be getting more frequent, as the ACLU has begun to document. Specifically, departments are becoming much more militarized.

"American neighborhoods are increasingly being policed by cops armed with the weapons and tactics of war," the civil rights legal organization says on its website. "Federal funding in the billions of dollars has allowed state and local police departments to gain access to weapons and tactics created for overseas combat theaters - and yet very little is known about exactly how many police departments have military weapons and training, how militarized the police have become, and how extensively federal money is incentivizing this trend."

Sources:

http://dailycaller.com

http://www.aclu.org

http://dailycaller.com

http://www.firstcoastnews.com