By Courtland Milloy
Wednesday, September 24, 2008

For a year, District residents have waited for the details to come out about the death of 14-year-old DeOnté Rawlings, one of the District's most controversial police shootings. City officials have withheld details, hiding behind the confidentiality of the grand-jury process even though the officers' accounts were first given to police investigators, not the grand jury.

But on Friday, Gregory L. Lattimer, an attorney for the Rawlings family, obtained copies of the interviews with the two D.C. police officers involved. I listened to Officer James Haskell's version of events yesterday. I hope to report on Officer Anthony Clay's version later.

Haskell's account, which absolves him, is by no means definitive or necessarily accurate. Lattimer calls it "nonsensical." But it's his version, which the public should hear:

On the evening of Sept. 17, 2007, he and Clay, both off-duty, were riding through an alley in a Southeast public-housing complex, searching for a stolen minibike. The officers are neighbors, and the bike had been stolen from Haskell's garage.

Not long after the search began, they saw a boy on the bike ride past them in the opposite direction. Haskell threw his Tahoe sport-utility vehicle into reverse and, with Clay riding shotgun, sped backward down the alley until they caught up with him.

"Drop the bike," Haskell told the youth.

"What? What?" he answered.

The boy was Rawlings -- and in less than a minute, he would be dead from a gunshot fired by Haskell.

Haskell told investigators that DeOnté "drops the bike and instead of running off, he goes into his pocket, and out comes the gun. I say, 'God, he's got the drop on me.' " DeOnté was standing about nine feet from the vehicle. When Haskell began reaching for his gun, which was holstered at his side, he said, DeOnté opened fire.

"He shot twice before I could point my gun out the window," Haskell said. "It was like 'bang, bang,' and then I fired twice from inside the vehicle. And he's running away and still firing. Then I get out of the car and he's still firing, and I began firing some more, and he drops." Asked by investigators if he identified himself as a police officer, Haskell said no. Both officers were out of uniform and riding in Haskell's personal vehicle.

Asked by investigators to describe how DeOnté was firing and running at the same time, Haskell said the boy was running with what police later said was a .45-caliber semiautomatic in his right hand while firing back over his left shoulder. Lattimer, a former assistant D.C. corporation counsel who specializes in police abuse cases, doesn't buy it. He has filed a $100 million wrongful-death lawsuit against the city on behalf of DeOnté's family.

"You've got a kid who is 5-foot-2, weighs 105 pounds, supposedly firing a powerful .45-caliber semiautomatic with one hand like it was a toy," Lattimer said. "But nobody can find the gun. There are no shell casings found within 100 feet of where the shooting supposedly began, and there is not a trace of residue, gunpowder or soot on DeOnté or his clothes, even though he was wearing a white T-shirt and muzzle fire was supposedly coming out over his shoulder."

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