Mom to Houston Police: Why is my son dead? Cops Stop Black Man for Riding Bike on Wrong Side of Street
/From [HERE] A grieving Houston mother is raising questions about how her 26-year-old son — who was stopped by police for riding his bicycle the wrong way without a head lamp — ended up dead, shot by police in the back of the head.
Charlene Butler also wants to know why the police version of events changed, with an offense report summary describing a struggle for the gun and a press release issued hours later offering a different account.
Authorities have said that an officer shot David Dwayne Butler after he pointed a gun at two Houston patrolmen who stopped him along a Fifth Ward industrial strip on Dec. 29.
But his relatives have lingering concerns, particularly after viewing snapshots that they authorized the funeral director to take showing an apparent bullet wound to the back of his head. The Houston Chronicle reviewed the photos.
"I just want to know what really happened," Charlene Butler said during an interview at her Houston home. "If he was doing anything wrong, why couldn't they write him a citation and let him go?"
Citing the ongoing investigation, a Houston Police Department spokesman declined to comment on the incident beyond details included in a news release issued the day after the shooting.
According to Butler's death certificate as well as the autopsy case status, a basic report from Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences, his cause of death is a gunshot wound to the head. Neither document specifies where the bullet entered his skull. The manner of death is homicide.
Photos taken at the funeral home show David Butler lying face up on a tray. His face has no exit wounds. The back of his head has a large shaved area with a hole that appears to be a gunshot entry wound. His scalp has been sliced from the ear to the top, revealing a roughly 6-inch incision, which his family says was cut to recover the bullet lodged in his brain.
Several investigations
Charlene Butler wants to know why Houston police never contacted her, and she wants to know if there is a video recording of the encounter with her son.
She and other family members finally got an audience with the Houston Police Department this month when they attended a town hall meeting about the Chad Holley beating footage. That night, the family met with Executive Assistant Chief Michael Dirden, who was representing Police Chief Charles McClelland on the panel. Butler's relatives expect details of his death to fuel growing community outrage about police brutality by HPD officers.
The case remains under investigation by HPD's homicide and internal affairs divisions and the Harris County District Attorney's Office.
The front page of the offense report, generated within hours of the shooting, indicates that the officers were searching Butler before an officer discharged his weapon. The brief summary says that officers "attempted to pat the suspect down for officer safety" when "the suspect resisted and pulled a pistol out of his pocket." The officers struggled in an attempt to take the gun away before the suspect "turned the firearm towards one of the officers who then shot the suspect."
But according to an HPD news release from public affairs dated hours later on Dec. 30, Officer C.D. Edwards and his partner were on routine patrol about 7:30 p.m. in the 3800 block of Jensen when they encountered a man riding a bicycle on the wrong side of the road without a head lamp. The officers stopped to investigate and called the man toward them.
As the man, later identified as Butler, was being questioned, he began to put his hands in his pants pockets. Butler did not comply with officer requests not to reach into his pockets, police said. He then "quickly reached" into his right front pants pocket and attempted to pull out what is described as a revolver. He did not follow commands to drop the gun. At some point, Butler — who is a felon — turned the gun toward Edwards, police said.
"Fearing for his life and that of his fellow officer, Officer Edwards discharged his duty weapon at least once and struck Butler," the release said. "Butler was then taken to the hospital where he died."
Edwards and his partner, D.A. Riggs, were placed on the customary three-day administrative leave that results from all officer-involved shootings. Edwards was sworn in as an officer in September 2007.
The night of the shooting, Charlene Butler was at her mother-in-law's house, also in Fifth Ward, when a nurse called. The woman said Butler needed to have someone drive her to Ben Taub General Hospital.
Her son, David, had been shot.
"They said it was a gunshot wound to the head. I automatically knew then," she said.
All she could keep screaming is: "No - not again." Another son, Gerald Tyrone Butler, was gunned down by a neighbor in June 2008 following an argument over money. He was 29.
A hospital staffer told her that paramedics revived Butler in the ambulance, but he slipped away again when he got to the ER. About two hours after she arrived, a detective told her that an HPD officer shot her son.
Relatives say they have spoken with a friend of her son's who was on the phone with him during the earliest moments of his encounter with police. That friend says that Butler was not resisting arrest and was saying that his hands were up before the phone disconnected.
Siblings Kathy Blueford Daniels and Joseph Ballard are trying to help Charlene Butler heal and find answers. Daniels is founder of the Houston-based BLAC MOM — short for Black, Latino, Asian, Caucasian Mourners of Murder.
Her son, Patrick Charles Murphy, was killed outside a Houston convenience store in 2006.
Ballard, a community activist, said he is conducting his own investigation into David Butler's death. "We're going to find out why they killed David," Ballard said.
Troubled early years
David Butler is the youngest of his mother's six children. He had been in trouble with the law since his pre-teen years. At age 15, he went to state prison for robbery and spent six years locked up.
In 2005, he began a six-month sentence in state jail for a drug offense and another eight months following a 2006 conviction for felony evading arrest with a motor vehicle, Harris County court records show.
In the last few years, Butler had cleaned up his life, his mother said, and found steady work with a construction company. He had been assigned to a crew in Oklahoma and was supposed to leave Houston Dec. 30.
David Butler also is survived by a 2-year-old son.
"I'll have to deal with this for the rest of my life," Charlene Butler said. "I don't want his son to grow up hating policemen because there are still a lot of good ones out there."
