"Take six of these and call me in the morning": Jerome Ersland, 59, says he acted out of fear and self-defense
Sad story out of Oklahoma.
Pharmacist Jerome Ersland has been changed with First-degree murder after shooting and killing 16-year old Antwun Parker in a robbery attempt...as he should be. Read the details of this story after the jump.
Taken from KOCO.com
OKLAHOMA CITY -- Prosecutors have charged Jerome Ersland with first-degree murder.
He was booked into the Oklahoma County Jail Wednesday after turning himself in, police said.
Ersland said two males tried to rob his pharmacy at Southwest 59th and Penn last Tuesday. Police investigators said Ersland shot 16-year-old Antwun Parker, killing him.
R.I.P. Antwun Parker
District Attorney David Prater said he defends a person's right to protect themselves, but Ersland crossed the line.
Surveillance video showed that the other man who came into the store demanding money had a gun but Parker did not. The tape showed that Parker seemed to be in the process of putting on a mask, police said.
Ersland fired shots at Parker, hitting him in the head. He also chased the second man down the street, firing two more shots.
"If that first shot had been fatal, we wouldn't be here," Prater said. "That was a legitimate shot taken by Mr. Ersland when he was in imminent threat of death or bodily injury. He's defending himself."
Prosecutors said Ersland returned to the store after the chase and fired five more shots into Parker's abdomen. Parker was unconscious with gunshot wounds to his head, prosecutors said.
A medical examiner said Parker would have survived the head injury, but died from the shooting to his abdomen.
"Jerome Ersland was justified in shooting Antwun Parker in the robbery attempt," Prater said. "Ersland is accused of exceeding that lawful authority through deadly force when Ersland shot Parker five times in the abdomen with a .380 caliber pistol after the failed robbery."
He said that Parker posed no imminent threat to Ersland at that point.
"When you put a pistol just a foot away from his chest and you fire five rounds into that child's chest, in my opinion, the laws of this state do not protect in the use of that deadly force," Prater said.
VIEW THE ACTUAL VIDEO FOOTAGE HERE (shocking to say the least)
After the shooting, Ersland told Eyewitness News 5 that he acted to save his life.
"They were shooting at me and I was just shooting to get them off of me and get to them to leave," Ersland said. "I wasn't trying to kill them."
Ersland's attorney, Irven Box, said his client plans to plead not guilty during his arraignment.
"I think the only message is, 'Enough is enough crime and robberies in this city,'" Box said. "I think he took the first steps toward doing that."
The Parker Family Watching The Video
Parker's Family Reacts
News of the murder charge came on the same day that Parker's family buried him.
"I'm mad, I'm mad," said Parker's mother, Cleta Jennings. "He didn't have to shoot my baby like that."
She said that the charges against Ersland give her a sense that justice is being served.
"I'm saying, 'Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, God. I'm excited. I'm so happy this man is being charged with murder," she said.
She said that while her son may have been mixed up with the wrong crowd and knows that what he did was wrong, she knows that Antwun would never hold a gun and didn't have to die.
"You could have stopped at one shot. You lied," Antwun's sister, Brittany Baldwin said, of Ersland. "Ain't nothing in the world that can replace him. Nothing can take away the pain I feel now."
Mike Parker, Antwun's father, said he was willing to forgive Ersland, but said what he did was not right.
A judge has set Ersland's bond at $100,000.
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This is absolutely terrible. This painfully reminds me of both the robbery scene in Nate Dogg's "One More Day" video (1:33 mark) and of a story I posted last year about Joe Horn, the "neighbor" who sniped two people who broke into his next door neighbor's house.
Old white men kill me (not literally, I hope) when they do shit like this and claim "self-defense." One thing I've learned about (some of) them is that they love to make examples out of young black men weather it be Antwun Parker or Mike Vick. Which is why I tell the wayward and straight-laced kids that I speak to every once in a while to not even bother to give "the man" a reason or opportunity to even do anything to you. They are just itching at the chance to take one of you out and let the "justice" system sort it out later.
How do ya'll feel about this? Granted, young Antwun made a mistake, but he didn't have to die for it. If Ersland was out to make an example, sadly, I hope it resonates in the minds of other kids thinking about doing the same thing.
8 comments:
I bet you would not even take the time to write this blog had it been a white kid that got shot. People in this country forget that racism works both ways. You should check your grammar as well.
@anonymous
i bet that I would take the time to write this blog and post this story had it been an unarmed white kid that got shot in the head, walked past and stepped over only to be five more times while laying unconscious whether the pharmacist was black or white. people forget that self-defense doesn't mean shoot defenseless people that pose you no harm. like the lawyer in the story said, it wouldnt be a story if the first shot was deadly. to go back and get another gun to "set an example" is overkill. i honestly feel that if this were a white kid, the pharmacist would not have done all of that. i wish i could feel otherwise, but i dont right now. i cant promise you that I will have a story about an unarmed white kid getting shot dead in a robbery attempt today or tomorrow, but if you hear of such a travesty and i dont hear of it, by all means feel free to let me know. i will take your advice and check my grammar, asap. thanks for visiting and commenting, you are welcome here.
Sorry man but I really gotta disagree with you on this one. I don't think race was a factor in this at all. If 2 white guys came in and put a gun in their face like that it would have probably been the same outcome, a criminal is a criminal is a criminal. I doubt dude was like "let me kill this kid because he's black." As a victim of armed robbery I can say that your mind goes somewhere else when that type of situation goes down. You immediately want to stop the threat by any means necessary. The footage doesn't look good at all but the guy probably had a million things going through his head at the time. If one person had a gun wouldn't it stand to reason that the other would as well?
And I feel sorry for the parents but to me, as soon as you decide commit a violent crime where you impose an imminent threat of danger or death to someone then you voluntarily relinquish all of your rights. Criminals only prey on those who they think are weak, as evidenced by the kid who HAD the gun running away like a bitch as soon as someone fought back. If they knew that this was a possible outcome if they chose to engage in that type of behavior then I doubt they would have done it.
IMO, they should charge the kid that ran with murder as opposed to the guy. Was the guy a raging racist who was waiting to take out a black person and would have DEFINITELY done it if not for this situation? Or a guy who's fight or flight response kicked in and he did what he thought was necessary to ensure the safety of him and the other employees?
I don't have any statistics but we all know once people get away with a few armed robberies the likely hood of them actually hurting or killing someone increases. So what if he let him live and once the guy recovered he went back into crime and actually killed someone? Would it have been worth it to spare the criminals life at the expense of an innocent? I think not.
There are simply too many people who are truly innocent who die everyday in cases like this where they are killed for a few dollars at a convince store for me to feel bad about somebody getting killed while committing a violent crime. These people are killed while trying to earn a honest living by people who decide not to work for a living and would rather steal and cheat to get through life at the expense of others.
And sorry again but I'm not buying the mom's excuse that he was "mixed up in the wrong crowd." That phrase is reserved for trying drugs, skipping school, having sex before you're "ready" and shit like that. Armed robbery is far beyond being mixed up with the wrong people. I believe that everything should go both ways. If the reverse of this situation happened and they killed him instead would there be any type of racial outrage on the truly innocents behalf? Were they targeting the store because they knew it was majorly white and thought they'd be an easier target with less resistance? No one knows except them but I will say that I do carry a firearm after my robbery experience and will not hesitate to use deadly force if put in another situation again. Maybe if people realize that if you put a gun in someones face then you open yourself up to getting the same treatment there wouldn't be as much crime as there is now.
it's strange, he knew he had a survaillance camera on, why would he set himself up like that? and he then turned himself in
on the other hand had the robber sirvived God knows what he'd attempt to do next time
i of course dunno about the pharmacist motives to make a proof round, but the color skin of the robber may have not been one of them
i guess one can't like a white robber more than the black
black fawks shoot each other also not because of racism
but yeah (excellent post by Burn One)
the man didn't even think about being filmed he just did things automatically protecting his life and his customers' with no reasoning cuz he was in a life or death situation phisically and psychologically, in such extreme situations any creature acts differently trying to remove the danger as quickly and as effectively as possible, there's i guess no time to think about any cultural things, or develop emotional response, it's pure existence and adrenalin and action in such circumstances
@ Burn One
I hear where you are coming from. I haven't been robbed at gun point before so yeah, i cant even begin to imagine what runs through one's mind, although I've thought of what I'd do in the situation. shooting to kill is definitely one of them though, going back for the death blow? the way dude in the video did, iono. that shit was just malicious to me.
Hooray for the pharmacist. The scumbag robber got what he deserved. The pharmacist has saved us from more armed robberies from Antwon down the road.
Hooray for the pharmacist. The scumbag robber got what he deserved. The pharmacist has saved us from more armed robberies from Antwon down the road.
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