The family of Leonel Disla receives long overdue justice in the shooting death of their 19 year old son
In light of the discord and civil unrest in Ferguson, the news is both intriguing and a beacon of hope as relatives of Leonel Disla, a Hispanic teen shot dead by a white New York police officer, won a lawsuit Tuesday, November 26, 2014 against the offending officer.
Back on October 30, 2005, Leonel Disla, age 19, was shot and killed by Sergeant Robert Barnett in the Bronx.
According to the New York Times, it was said that Disla was waving a long kitchen knife after a fight shortly after 2 a.m. that fateful morning.
A sergeant, lieutenant, and an officer responded to a report of shots fired and having found no witnesses or victims when they noticed a crowd on Creston Avenue in the Tremont section of the Bronx. It appeared to the officers as if Disla and another man was in the process of assaulting a third man.
Having been approached by the police, it was said in a police statement that Disla pointed the knife at both the officer and the sergeant before being shot in the abdomen and rushed to St. Barnabas Hospital. He died six hours later.
The day after the Missouri grand jury decided not to indict police officer Darren Wilson for the murder of Michael Brown, a jury in Bronx Supreme Court unanimously decided that the city of New York and NYPD were at fault for Disla’s death on that fateful day in 2005.
The Bronx court will meet with a new jury in January to decide how much the Disla family will receive in damages, according to the family’s attorney, Ilaan Maazel.
Maazel noted that there are strong parallels between Brown’s and Disla’s cases.
“In both cases there was no special prosecutor investigating the police, and I think that’s a problem,” Maazel said via Reuters. “Police have a hard job but it’s so important that when a police officer violates the law that he’s held accountable.”
Ferguson police confirmed that Brown was unarmed during the incident but said that he tried to reach for Wilson’s gun. Darren Wilson claimed in Grand Jury testimony that Brown put his hand in his waistband, leading him to believe that he had a gun. In Disla’s case New York police said he waved a 7-inch knife blade at officers trying to break up a fight. The police’s claim was later tried at the civil trial, according to Reuters. According to the New York Times, it was said that a 12-inch blade was recovered at the scene.
After Disla died in the hospital due to a fatal shot to the abdomen, no criminal charges were filed. Just like Wilson, Barnett was a veteran officer who claimed to have shot the 19-year-old man because he feared for his life and safety, a common go-to phrase to justify such killings.
With no criminal charges filed against the officer, Disla’s mother Candida pressed forward with a civil suit.
“The family has waited a very long time to get some justice in this case,” Maazel said.
Law experts believe that the winning of this suit could set the stage for a similar resolution should Michael Brown’s parents decide to go the same route.
-Nykki Siren (@QueenMelaK)
