As Hector Morejon was dying, after being shot
by California Police, he cried out with final desperate words to his mother:
“Mommy, Mommy, please come, please come.”
Those words now haunt Lucia Morejon, Hector’s
mother. She tells us that Long Beach police thought the 19-year-old was in
possession of a firearm. They were wrong. But this alone seemed cause to the
Long Beach officers to open fire and kill Hector on Thursday afternoon.
Lucia Morejon’s attorney says Hector was
clearly unarmed, and had nothing that resembled a firearm when police unloaded
on him.
Hector’s final words to his mother came as he
was being placed into an ambulance, the attorney alleges. They desperate cry
was a response to police refusing to allow Lucia see her dying son before the
ambulance drove away.
“He was reaching for her – reaching out to her
for help,” Sonia Mercado, the lawyer for the family told The Huffington Post.
“She identified herself as his mother,
expecting to ride with him to the hospital, but they refused to let her in.”
Now, Lucia says she hears these dying words of
her innocent son, every day, echoing in her mind: “Mommy, Mommy, please come,
please come.”
“It’s a tough thing to live with as a parent,”
Mercado added.
The family’s attorney continued, saying that
Lucia is so unbelievably distraught that she has been unable to give any
interviews herself. Her son was innocent of any wrong-doing that would have
justified the police use of lethal force, and naturally “she is deeply in
shock.”
For their part, the Long Beach Police
Department claims that the shooting happened while they were investigating
reports of trespassing and vandalism.
“The officer observed [Morejon] turn towards
him, while bending his knees, and extending his arm out as if pointing an
object which the officer perceived was a gun,” a press release from the Long
Beach Police Department attempted to rationalize.
“At this point, an officer involved shooting
occurred,” the statement continued, in noting the obvious.
All in all, Friday’s press release said nothing
of any substance or value. The police have made it clear that they will protect
their own, even when they gun down innocent, unarmed teenagers.
Police admit: “a weapon was not recovered from
the scene.”
The family attorney notes that “the only thing
the police have said is the same worn out excuse – ‘I thought I saw a gun,'”
Mercado explained.
Now, the family is requesting that the U.S.
Department of Justice conduct an independent investigation into the shooting
and the Long Beach Police Department.
Mercado said that police investigating
themselves is “clearly a conflict of interest.”
“We often find in these cases that evidence was
lost or destroyed,” Mercado said.
“The public is entitled to know how this
happened,” she continued. “Therefore, this investigation should go to an
independent inquest by the Department of Justice or another police department.
The family is very concerned and wants justice and accountability.”
