ST. LOUIS • Relatives of Isaiah M. Hammett and some activists marked the one-year anniversary of his death Thursday, denouncing police for fatally shooting Hammett in a raid on his home on South Kingshighway.
ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ want police to reveal what their internal investigations have found, and they want the U.S. Department of Justice to conduct its own inquiry. They chanted outside police headquarters, and a few got inside the headquarters lobby before police locked the front doors.
St. Louis police detective Rob Skaggs holds an AK-47 rifle police say was used by Isaiah Hammett to fire shots at SWAT officers serving a search warrant at his South Kingshighway home on Wednesday, June 7, 2017. Officers returned fire and killed Hammett.
SWAT officer s Hammett, 21, on June 7, 2017, as they tried to serve a warrant; Hammett was suspected of being involved in the sale of illegal guns and drugs.
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Police say that Hammett opened fire on them with an AK-47 and that there was a “firefight†inside the house. Relatives dispute that account. No officers were injured.
John Chasnoff, longtime member of the activist organization Coalition Against Police Crimes and Repression, called what police did to Hammett a “murder.†Chasnoff said the family had hired a forensic expert to examine the bullet holes.
“Though police say he fired at them, there is no evidence of that in the house,†Chasnoff said. “So we believe he was unjustly murdered.â€
Hammett’s family, Chasnoff, state Rep. Bruce Franks, D-St. Louis, and protesters were among 35 people who met outside City Hall on Thursday, then marched to police headquarters. They held signs that said “100 shots, 1 dead, 0 warnings†and “One year later, where’s the investigation?â€
They have disputed police accounts all along and held vigils and marches. On the one-year anniversary, they were joined by the mother of , another man fatally shot by police.
Hammett’s mother, Gina Torres, said police were still trying to keep evidence away from the public. “They don’t want my son’s story out there at all on what they did to my son. They are trying to keep it quiet.â€
Schron Jackson, a department spokeswoman, said the investigation was ongoing.
“It would be premature for the department to comment on any findings before the investigation has concluded,†she said.
Torres also is upset that police in October while executing a search warrant in a robbery investigation. The home is in the 5400 block of South Kingshighway.
Two men were arrested in that raid, and with robbery and armed criminal action.
Charring marks the spot where Gina Torres says a flash bang thrown by police during a raid exploded on a bed where her two children, ages 6 and 10, where sleeping in their home in the 5400 block of South Kingshighway in St. Louis on Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017. The children were shaken but physically unhurt according to Torres.
Torres said children were in the home when police entered. Officers used a flash-bang device in a room where two boys, ages 6 and 10, were sleeping, Torres said. The device exploded on the corner of the bed, burning a hole in a blanket and charring the mattress, she said. The children were shaken but unhurt, she said.
At the time of that raid, the home was still from the police shooting of Hammett, more than five months earlier.
