Lawyer: Teen brothers’ arrest after Fort Worth park mass shooting was motivated by race
Charges have been dropped against a Fort Worth teen who was accused of engaging in organized criminal activity after he attended the Mother’s Day gathering in Fort Worth that became the site of a mass shooting, according to his attorney.
Michael Campbell told the Star-Telegram he learned of the dismissal on Sunday, bringing to an end weeks of his protesting with the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office that the 15-year-old was a victim — not a suspect — in the incident at Village Creek Park that left five people wounded. The teen’s 13-year-old brother was also arrested, Campbell said, but the DA never filed charges.
Campbell, however, said he still has questions about why the pair of teens were arrested in the first place, alleging it fits into a pattern of Fort Worth police criminalizing young Black men as gang members. “A lot of us go through the criminal justice system,” he said, “and then these things stick with us for the rest of our lives.”
When asked to comment on allegations raised by Campbell, Fort Worth police spokesperson Officer Daniel Segura said in an email, “We appreciate the opportunity but no comments will be made.” He said questions about the charges against the teen should be sent to the District Attorney’s Office.
A spokesperson for the DA said in an email, “There are pending adult cases associated with this case, therefore we cannot provide comment at this time.”
The teen brothers had gone with their cousin to the park that day to hang out with friends for the first time in weeks due to the coronavirus, Campbell said. When the gunfire rang out, he said, the two were in the mass of hundreds captured on video frantically running away with their heads ducked. He said the 15-year-old then drove away, when he encountered the second shooting of that day.
A suspect who had been involved with the initial incident fired toward the teen’s car outside of Joe’s Food Mart, riddling it with bullet holes, Campbell said. A police report obtained by the Star-Telegram notes this occurred about 20 minutes after the other shooting and an innocent bystander was struck. That person’s condition isn’t listed.
Police announced they arrested two accused gunmen in the park shooting 10 days later, along with a suspect charged with making a threat. In the following weeks, Campbell said the teen brothers, as well as their 17-year-old cousin, were among about a dozen additional people arrested. The three relatives were accused of being members of the Crips gang involved in the shooting.
The 15-year-old spent 16 days in the Tarrant County Juvenile Detention Center, he said. Though the sophomore at Everman High School was scared, Campbell said, he was confident there was evidence to exonerate him — namely cellphone videos from friends showing him running and bullet holes in his car.
He was ultimately right, he said. But the dismissal of charges doesn’t mean this case vanishes from his life.
“He would have to pay to get it expunged from his record,” Campbell said over the phone on Tuesday. “Once you’re in gang profile, you have a record. That record is permanent — there is no wiping that record away.”
The case against the teen’s older cousin is still pending, Campbell noted. The Star-Telegram isn’t naming any of the teens who were arrested because of their juvenile status.
Campbell, as well as his legal partner Andrew Wilkerson, described the arrests of the brothers as an example of the type of over-policing of minority communities that U.S. citizens have protested in the wake of the killing of George Floyd. He acknowledges that the men who allegedly fired the shots in the Mother’s Day incident set off by the killing of an up-and-coming local rapper deserve punishment.
But the teen brothers, he said, have been victims — first of the shooting and then of the justice system.
‘They decided to treat him like a criminal’
The 15-year-old, who didn’t want to be interviewed for this story, is a straight-A student with a passion for automobiles, Campbell said. He has worked with his grandfather as a mechanic since he was 6 years old, learning how to fix up cars and even 18-wheelers. He’s in an auto mechanic class at school.
The teen was inside the detention center in late June when around 100 angry community members gathered outside, claiming multiple juveniles were being held in connection to the mass shooting, Campbell said. The protesters chanted “free our boys!” as they lamented what they described as wrongful detentions.
Authorities had accused the 15-year-old of being in a gang, Campbell said, because on Mother’s Day he had spoken with people at the park involved in the shooting, and police also reviewed his cellphone. But they conceded from the beginning he didn’t have a weapon, Campbell said.
When the teen was released on July 1 due to a lack of evidence, he said, he was ordered to wear an ankle monitor tracking his location for 30 days.
“After the prosecutor conceded to him not being a criminal, they decided to treat him like a criminal,” Campbell said.
He said the brothers and the more than 400 others who packed into the park on May 10 shouldn’t have been there, since — as many noted on social media at the time — they were violating coronavirus restrictions. Police were already at the park before any shots were fired to investigate complaints.
Campbell and Wilkerson, however, believe what happened next was wrong. The dismissal of charges from the district attorney shows that, they said.
Wilkerson feels the investigation would have gone differently if the shooting had been at a predominantly white park.
“Overzealous is the nice way to say this. Overzealous police work is the nicest way we could put this,” Wilkerson said. “I honestly do think that race played a very big part in them profiling these boys — these two young teenagers that have never been in trouble before.”
This story was originally published August 19, 2020 at 5:48 PM.
