Ellerbe ruling
The U.S. Justice Department announced this week that two troopers involved in the shooting death of a 12-year-old boy on Christmas Eve 2002 will not be held criminally responsible. A civil suit remains pending in federal court to determine if Troopers Juan Curry and Samuel Nassan were negligent in causing the death of Michael Ellerbe. It isn’t likely that this case will be decided anytime soon. U.S. Attorney Mary Buchanan needed to let the public know that Justice after interviewing every available witness – including those provided by the boy’s family – had cleared the troopers of criminal wrongdoing. It is the same conclusion reached in January 2003 by a Fayette County Coroner’s Jury and by Fayette County District Attorney Nancy Vernon. Buchanan’s conclusion was expected, but her timing couldn’t be worse, as the second anniversary of Ellerbe’s death creeps closer on the calendar.
The Christmas holidays will forever be scarred by this tragedy. And that is what this was – a terrible tragedy in which a string of mistakes preceded the shooting death of a 12-year-old boy. Although the child’s family and its high profile attorneys, attempted to make this a case about race (Ellerbe was black and Nassan, the trooper, who shot him was white, although Curry is black) they have failed so far to show that the color of the child’s skin led to his death.
Instead, mistakes were made when a 12-year-old boy got behind the wheel of a stolen vehicle and drove it through the streets of Uniontown. A mistake was made by a 12-year-old boy who wrecked the vehicle then tried to run from police. A mistake was made when Curry’s gun went off as he tried to scale a fence during the chase. A mistake was made when Nassan saw Curry fall to the ground and assumed he had been shot. And a mistake was made when Nassan fired, killing Ellerbe.
There were other mistakes that were made. Ones that occurred long before Dec. 24, 2002 came around. Those are the mistakes that led a 12-year-old boy on a joyride instead of to the bosom of a warm family celebration of a holiday tailored especially for kids. The price that was paid for the cumulative effects of these mistakes is far too high to comprehend. But criminal? A coroner’s jury said no. The district attorney said no. And now the U.S. Justice Department concurs.
There are still questions that linger, but they are best suited to be asked during a civil proceeding.