After Montco DA clears officers in fatal shooting, the man’s family is demanding transparency
Deadly force was justified against Wyleek Tinsley, officials said, because officers heard screaming and a gunshot while responding to reports that he had shot at his girlfriend.
Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele has determined that Abington Township police officers were justified in shooting an unarmed man while responding to a call about a domestic dispute in March.
Because the officers heard a woman screaming and a gunshot fired shortly after they arrived at the scene, “the facts of this case supported the use of deadly force to prevent serious bodily injury to themselves” or the woman living in the apartment, Steele said in a statement.
The woman’s boyfriend, Wyleek Tinsley, 19, was killed by the officers while holding an object they could not initially identify but believed could be a weapon, according to Steele. After the gunfire, they saw it was a cell phone.
Lawyers representing Tinsley’s family said Tuesday that they are troubled by what they described as a lack of transparency surrounding Steele’s investigation.
“It’s all on video. Why won’t you show this video to the family, to the attorneys, and, more importantly, why can’t the public and media see it so they can be the trier of fact and form their own opinions on it?” asked Joseph Marrone, the Center City attorney representing Tinsley’s parents.
Marrone said that the entire encounter was recorded by responding officers’ body cameras, and that Steele’s office has denied his requests to view the footage.
He said he plans to file a civil rights lawsuit in federal court next week in order to subpoena the video.
In his statement, Steele said Abington officers were called to the Rosemore Gardens Apartments in Glenside on March 6 by an 11-year-old girl who told 911 dispatchers that Tinsley had “just shot a gun” at her mother.
The girl said she was not sure if her mother was injured.
As the officers walked down the hallway toward the apartment, they heard a woman screaming and a gunshot. Forcing their way into the apartment to investigate, they found Tinsley standing at the end of a “darkened hallway,” according to Steele.
Officers opened fire when they saw that Tinsley was holding something in his hand, the DA said. Later, as they rendered aid to him, the officers saw that the object was a cell phone, he said.
Tinsley was taken to Abington Jefferson Hospital, where he was later pronounced dead.
In ruling the officers’ actions justified, Steele noted that just 17 seconds passed between when the officers heard the gunfire outside the apartment and when they shot Tinsley.
While investigating inside the apartment, the officers found that the woman who lives there was uninjured in a bedroom. A loaded .30-caliber Smith & Wesson handgun she had purchased was found in that room, he said.
That room had two bullet holes in one of its walls, and two spent shell casings were found on the floor. The Smith & Wesson tested positive for Tinsley’s DNA, Steele said.
Marrone, Tinsley’s attorney, said that the teen had been dating the woman who rented the apartment for a few weeks, and that she was several years older than he.
Moments before being shot, Tinsley was on the phone with his father, according to Marrone, asking for a ride home after getting into a dispute with the woman.
“It’s a troubling case as far as I’m concerned, and it raises a lot of questions that we need to know more about,” Marrone said. “What did they really see? They said it was a dark hallway, how can you see anything?”
“If the video shows what they saw,” he said, ”let’s look at the video.”