The initial reports told a story of 20 year old Danroy Henry, Jr., a Pace University football player, trying to run down cops as they arrived to stop a bar brawl outside Finnegan’s Grill at one in the morning. 

When a Pleasantville police officer knocked on the window, Mr. Henry started to drive away, striking the officer and tossing him onto the hood of the car. The car then knocked into another officer, the police said, who was trying to pull the first officer from the hood.

Meanwhile, the Pleasantville officer, who was still clinging to the hood of the car, pulled out his gun and fired into the car. Another officer then fired into the car, which came to a stop after it crashed into a parked police vehicle, the police said.

Mr. Henry and a passenger were shot, the police said. They were taken to Westchester Medical Center, where Mr. Henry was pronounced dead.

For obvious reasons, Danroy Henry didn’t get a say in the matter.  Fortunately, witnesses did, and tell a different story.  Rather than trying to run anyone down, it appears that cops knocked on the window indicating that Henry should move his car and he complied.  As he did so, other cops ran in front of his car, one with gun drawn.  What followed is known.

The police account makes no sense whatsoever, in that there is no reason in the world for Henry to try to run down a police officer, while it makes enormous sense that he would be directed to move his car out of the way.  At the same time, it’s easy to imagine that the officer who sees a car suddenly coming toward him, even if because the cop ran in front of the car as opposed to the car being drive toward the cop, thinks he’s at risk. 

By all accounts, there was a mass of people outside Finnegan’s, estimated at 150, and a gaggle of cops responding to the call for aid, estimated at 50.  Chaos ensued.

The officer who killed Henry, Aaron Hess, was from the Pleasantville.  Officers of the Mount Pleasant Police Department don’t get to discharge their weapons often, and may not be as prepared to fire, or hold fire, as officers who face threatening situations more regularly.  Whether this was a split second decision or mere accidental discharge is hard to say, and will likely never be known. 

The problem is that even before the smoke clears, the concern is how to explain what happened.  It requires justification.  The conduct of the police officers following Henry’s shooting is telling.

According to reports in the Boston Globe, after Henry was shot, he was removed from his car and handcuffed. When police realized that his wounds were grave, they began to administer first aid but did not remove the cuffs. Mount Pleasant Police Chief Louis Alagno said removing the cuffs would have been “a waste of time.” In total, police waited 15 minutes before giving Henry medical attention.

Curiously, one would expect an immediate call for medical assistance after the police shot someone, without regard to whether police “realized that his wounds were grave.”  Anytime police shoot a person, calling an ambulance would seem to be a fine idea.  The police aren’t usually required to make medical diagnoses before seeking aid.

That they pulled the shot Henry from the car and cuffed him is standard procedure, That they waited to get him aid, on the other hand, is not.  That’s the hiatus, the time used to get their story straight.  That’s where they ask each other, “what just happened?” That’s where they find the right words to express what the shot person did wrong and why the cop was justified in shooting him.  It took them 15 minutes to figure this one out.  It was a tough one.

Mount Pleasant Police Chief Alagno is trying to find a video of the scene that will show what happened.  It won’t matter.  If one exists, it will show a car moving forward, a cop suddenly in front of it and guns discharging.  It answers nothing.

Police Officer Aaron Hess likely regrets everything that happened that night.  It wasn’t his purpose to shoot a Pace University football player and kill him.  He just wanted to do his job and make it home to kiss his kids.  Chaos intervened.  Danroy Henry, another father’s son, is dead because he did what a police officer directed him to do.