One Year Later, Some Details in Fatal Shooting of 14-Year-Old

During the shootout, Haskell said, Clay got out of the vehicle and crouched behind it. But Clay never drew his weapon or fired, Haskell said. Lattimer said that, too, was unusual because he'd never heard of an officer just sitting back and watching his partner come under fire. After the shooting, Haskell said, he told Clay to use his radio to call for help. He said Clay began talking into the radio but later realized he was on the "wrong channel." So Haskell took the radio and told Clay to drive the SUV back to the house.

"I was concerned about my family, so I told him to take the truck home and give me the radio," Haskell said. Clay then left the scene with what would later prove to be a crucial piece of evidence: the vehicle into which DeOnté had allegedly fired two shots and out of which came two shots allegedly fired back.

An investigator asked Haskell: "Did you see who picked up the gun he was shooting?" Haskell replied, "I saw somebody bend down, but I didn't see if anything was picked up." Rather than go look for the gun, however -- or check to see if DeOnté was dead or alive -- Haskell also left the scene. He told investigators that he had become concerned for his safety because "a mob was starting to gather."

Haskell then used Clay's police radio to call for a police cruiser to pick him up about a block from the shooting. At least seven other officers had responded to the shooting. But Haskell did not return to the scene. Instead, he directed the police officer who picked him up to take him to his mother's house, which is in the area. He told investigators that he wanted to tell his mother about the shooting before she found out from somebody else. DeOnté was pronounced dead at the scene. He had been shot in the back of the head.

Haskell and Clay were recently cleared of criminal wrongdoing by D.C. police and the U.S. attorney. Peter Nickles, the District's acting attorney general, dismissed Lattimer's suspicions. "Mr. Lattimer sees a conspiracy in everything," Nickles told me yesterday. "It's simply inappropriate for him to litigate this case by making accusations in a public forum."

But Haskell's account certainly calls the officers' professionalism, if not their morality, into question. Moreover, Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) and Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier have pledged for a year to be open and honest with the public about the circumstances surrounding the tragic shooting. Both promised to keep Charles Rawlings, the dead youth's father, abreast of the investigation. I asked Rawlings the other day if he'd heard anything from Fenty or Lanier about how the investigation had ended. He said: "I call and leave messages. But they don't call back."

E-mail:milloyc@washpost.com