Twenty-three year old man shot dead by police in a marijuana raid

[Nevada420]

Twenty-three year old man shot dead by police in a marijuana raid

Dayton Daily News
10/01/02
Cathy Mong

Dozens protest Preble County police shooting

Slain man’s roommates say he was unarmed

EATON - Preble County law-enforcement officials declined to talk publicly Monday as they turned information about Friday's fatal shooting by a police officer of a 23-year-old man over to detectives from the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office.


Montgomery County investigators, called in by Preble County Sheriff Tom Hayes, also said they would not talk about their review of the shooting by a member of a Preble County's emergency services group — officers from a number of police departments who are trained to handle drownings and hostage and other situations.

However, it was anything but quiet outside the Preble County Courthouse, where dozens of friends and relatives picketed and said that police were covering up what happened to Clayton Jacob Helriggle, 23, of 1282 Ohio 503 South.

The protesters disputed police claims that Helriggle had a gun when he descended a stairwell and was shot by a Lewisburg police officer, whose identity has not been released. Friends and relatives on Monday carried blue plastic cups similar to the one they said Helriggle had in his hand Friday night.

Among the protesters were four of Helriggle's roommates, three of whom said they were inside the brick farmhouse when police stormed the house to serve a warrant to search for narcotics.

Maj. Wayne Simpson of the Preble County Sheriff's Office declined to discuss information about what happened Friday night and said a report on the shooting of the Preble County man had not been completed. Preble County Prosecutor Rebecca Ferguson said she sealed the search warrant after the shooting, and had no comment regarding the investigation.

"They're a professional group of officers, that's what their job is, and I'm not going to second-guess them. Whatever (Montgomery County officials) come up with, they come up with," Ferguson said.

Friends called Helriggle "peaceful and nonviolent," but police said the 1997 Twin Valley South High School graduate held a 9 mm handgun, not a blue cup, in his right hand when he descended the dimly lighted stairs. Roommates said Helriggle owned a 9 mm gun, but that it was upstairs when police entered their house.

"It's like we were armed, hardened criminals waiting inside to take them on," said Wes Bradley, 26, who lived in the bottom of the six-bedroom farmhouse with his girlfriend, 22-year-old Tasha Webster.

Bradley said he and Webster were near the kitchen next to the stairs, when officers "broke through the back door with battering rams and started throwing in flash grenades three at a time, to blind us."

The officers wore full body armor and carried shields, he said.

Another roommate, Ian Albert, said he had returned home from the grocery store with Chris Elmore, 24, who remained outside while Albert ran into the house.

"We saw at least two paddy wagon-type vehicles, like a SWAT bus," Elmore said. "About 30 officers stormed out of the woods" surrounding the farmhouse. "They'd cut the barbed wire, and you could see a staging area, like where 25 to 30 uniformed cops had been lying down and slithered along the grass."

Officers ordered Elmore to get on the ground, and he said he heard three pops, which he said could have been the flash grenades and gunshot.

"I yelled 'Nobody's armed,' and they told me, 'Shut up, shut up.' ”

Elmore described the action "like a movie, in slow motion."

Inside, Albert said, the police threw him against the staircase, "with my head on the second step up. I wanted to yell at Clay, but I looked up and saw him, rounding the stairway, and he had this look on his face, like, 'What's going on?' and the cops yelled, 'Get down' and then 'boom.' ”

Albert, who completed four months of Navy Seal training, said he reached up for Helriggle, "and I tried to apply pressure," he said, placing his left palm on his right chest, where Helriggle was struck by the gunshot.

"He died in my arms," he said. "It took about two minutes."

Albert said he was placed in a sheriff's car, and Helriggle's parents arrived.

"They saw me, drenched in Clay's blood, and they ask me, 'Is he all right?' and I just shook my head. The cops are smoking and joking, high-fiving each other. Wow, I think, they took down a farm of unarmed hippies.

"If they would have come to the door and said, 'Give us your dope, hippies,' we'd have gotten about a $100 ticket."

Police said they confiscated a small amount of marijuana, pills, drug paraphernalia and quantities of packaging items used in the distribution of marijuana.

The four roommates said they smoke marijuana from time to time and that they had marijuana pipes in the house. Bradley said he had a prescription for Fiorocet, a codeinelike painkiller, for a bad knee. They said the packaging police referred to was a box of plastic sandwich bags.

Webster said there was nothing in the house "that a good divorce lawyer couldn't have gotten us out on a misdemeanor," and said an old shotgun and a .22-caliber rifle found there were used for hunting.

"We target-practiced outside all the time, shot at bales of hay, jugs, that sort of thing," Webster said.

Bradley and Webster said Helriggle took a nap around 5 p.m. and had made plans to meet his girlfriend later.

"I'm not sure if he woke up from the bashing on the door or what," Bradley said.

All four said they were not read their rights or told what charges were filed against them. They were released from the Preble County Jail around 1:30 a.m. Saturday. No criminal charges have been filed.

Nancy Fahrenholz, the daughter of Everett "Bill" Fahrenholz, an attorney and former country prosecutor, hugged Bradley on Monday at the courthouse. Helriggle and five roommates rented the house from the Fahrenholzes.

"I'm so sorry," said Fahrenholz, a Rhode Island resident in the area to finish up the estate of her father, Bill Fahrenholz, who died a month ago.

"(Dad) would have been furious at this," she said. "We're all very distressed."

She said Helriggle "was a really nice guy," and that her family was pleased with the five young people's work on rehabilitating the farmhouse.

Helriggle's 77-year-old grandfather, Donald, a Miamisburg resident and Ohio Bell retiree, said his grandson rented the farmhouse "so they could play their instruments, listen to their music and drink a little beer. . . . They just wanted to be doing what 23-year-olds do."

[XxJWxX]

Im gonna smoke a bowl for that man who was MURDERED by the police....My blessings go out to him and his family...Fuck, he was just a young adult havin a good time, piggies fuck up everything.

[smokealotty]

im sure if he knew they were going to open fire he woulda went out shooting........im going to go pour some liquor out for this man. and i hope that pig has a guilty conciense and shoots himself

[phunkyphil]

fuck the pigs.

[HUNTSMIN]

Never trust a pig they only shit on u

[MrsDingusus]

My husband ex-mother-in-law called Crime Stoppers and reported that we were selling drugs and using drugs in front of our children.....


A typical evening, both of us just got home from work, makin dinner, kids are in the shower, knock knock on the door....

My husband answers the door, I didn't think anything of it, I was getting a towel for my two nekked daughters runnin out of the bathroom streaking in the living room....as I chased them thru the living room and back down the hall I paused to look over his shoulder......he'd been standing there talking a couple minutes....

Lo and behold....there was the entire swat team....8 officers gfarbes all in black, plus three other unmarked cruisers...

They told us what the report was....gave us 2 options....
1- don't tell em anything and don't let them search the house... they'll follow us, bug our phone, make a nuisance of themselves...
2- let them walk through the house, not going thru drawers or closets, just a walk thru....

my husband takes option 2

meanwhile, hearing these options and knowing where it was leading I crept quietly to the back of the house and signaled to our roomate to hide the bong !

So while he gave the swat team the grand tour of the bottom floor...showing them the kids rooms, painting and repairs we'd done...really makin a big deal of showing them things...meanwhile our roomate just walks nonchalant downstairs and out to the porch...

The cops went upstairs, came down a few minutes later and left...much to our relief...

Luckily they did not have a warrant...we smoke pot, but not in front of our kids and it's never around them....plus we never sold to anyone but our closest friends, and then it was really just that only one of us would have to run to get it and it ended up being cheaper going in all together...

Sorry, rambling...stoned again and the article reminded me of it...

The Point I was Making : For those of you who just scrolled to the bottom
There are people everyday persecuted for smoking pot while rapists and snipers and murderers run around...

[LaBruja1]

I live in MD and was wondering what fuck ups the press was refering to while searching for the sniper, now I know.
I am so sorry about the loss of lives through our so called "protectors". Just goes to show how paranoid "they" get when some SNITCH

[LaBruja1]

I live in MD and was wondering what the "fuck up" the press was refering to while searching for the sniper, now I know after reading about the shooting of that innocent person.We didnt hear about that on the East Coast.
I am so sorry about the loss of lives through our so called "protectors". Just goes to show how paranoid "they" get when some SNITCH DOESNT hand them the perp!
I have naked nature girl daughters who streak through where ever they can after they shower and it's hard to explain that that is the same puerco that was telling them to look for pipes, bongs, etc. that will bust into the home that Mama/Daddy works hard to mantain to look for a bit of smoke on Hear Say instead of looking for jobless murdering devils since that requires some risk and a little observasion. Jeez, so sorry
it's getting so hard to explain how feelings work when you believe and love something THE MAN wants a piece of!
BTW, you can tell them to go get off their lazy ass and get Mr Judge to sign a warrant(if for nothing else but to inconvenience them) b4 setting hoof in your house but they will make 1 stay there to WATCH y'all.

[Free Gilead]

That's awful! Goddamn pigs have to ruin everybody's fun! I say fuck 'em all!

[she]

Found this at www.politicalthoughts.com/hayes.html

Excerpt from Dayton Daily News interview with Sheriff Tom Hayes of Preble County, Ohio on the shooting of Clayton Helriggle by Officer Kent Moore. Interviewers, Cathy Mong of the Dayton Daily News and Galileo Galilei, 16th century scientist.

G. Galilei: Sheriff Hayes, bring us up to date on the investigation into the killing of Mr. Helriggle during a pot raid on his home.

Sheriff Hayes: It appears Lewisburg Officer Kent Moore was overcame by the excitement of the moment. It looks like we killed another kid needlessly.

G. Galilei: You were quoted in the evening news as saying there was marijuana trafficking taking place at the farmhouse. Was that the case?

Sheriff Hayes: No, just some good old boys with a few joints. We had 15 men enter the farmhouse with automatic weapons, flashbang grenades, full body armor. It was just like in the movies. Like I said though, in the heat of the moment, Officer Moore, blew away the kid. On advice of our lawyers, we have to use words like trafficking. You see there is a lot of liability to go around and we have to cover our tracks. Protect our own, if you will.

G. Galilei: Could you explain what you mean?

Sheriff Hayes: Sure. Law enforcement in these parts has always been curious as to what goes on in that farmhouse. Mind you, we had no legal basis to be snooping so we jacked an "informant" to fabricate some trafficking nonsense. Judge Paul Henry issued a warrant, knowing that the basis for that issuance was suspect. My Sheriff department supplied that information. Remember, more then a dozen shots were fired in that farmhouse, all by law enforcement. We are lucky we did not kill more people.


G. Galilei: What happens from here?

Sheriff Hayes: Officer Moore shot that kid unnecessarily. If it was my child, I would consider this act a blood debt. Think about this, because of some dried weeds, two families have been destroyed. Folks, if you are going to smoke marijuana, you need to consider making your house raid proof. As outlined in ashcroft_balko.html, the dual-fuel air mixture setup will insure that no raid can take place without destroying the raiding party.

Attorney General John Ashcroft responds: The War on Drugs is indeed a War. It is a domestic war that has killed too many Americans and has destroyed too many families. It is incumbent upon all freedom loving Americans to resist when possible, repel when necessary. I ask Freedom loving Americans to comply not at all, to die not alone. To those who would propagate the War on Drugs and would take your life, take their life first. To those who would propagate the War on Drugs and take the lives of your family members, take the lives of their family members. The Revolutionary War was predicated on smaller and fewer atrocities upon the Colonies then what the American people are now experiencing in the fifty states....

[Free Gilead]

No kidding, she. How true.

[roach]

Believe me when I say ,Alot of folks are arming themselves now ,to end such brutal attacks on innocent civilians. And I am totally in favor of it !


Peacful revolution has gained us nothing.


roach

[StillSmoken]

Those fucken Pigs-I'm going to smoke a fat ass blunt to remember that fallen fellow pothead--

[bigskins]

I am going to print this news 20 times and place them in mail boxes everywhere in South Austin Texas for ALL the fallen potheads that have lost thier lives in cop busts. For all the people who just wanna get high.

[stonedmullet]

this is a true shame,i don't know how much weed this young man had but concider this,how many drugs do the police conferscate just to put back on the street.

I believe that the only reason that weed is eleagle is to create a black market,just think,what could be better sell some pore sucker some weed,charge him with possetion,fine him,conferscate the weed and repeat the prosses.
now tell me why weed is eleagle i dont think that they would make as much money if it was leagle like cigarrets or alcahol and the only money they maid was tax