Slain man’s mother wants cop charged
A Dutchess County man who was fatally shot by a New Jersey state trooper last month during a traffic stop was treated worse than a dog, and the trooper should be charged with murder, the man’s mother said Thursday.
At times fighting through emotion, Racquel Barrett spoke to The Associated Press during a video interview from the office of her attorney in White Plains.
“The police officer needs to be charged for his murder,” she said. “Six shots — that is too much. I mean for a dog, you wouldn’t do that, right? He’s a human being.”
Barrett’s son, Maurice Gordon, 28, of Poughkeepsie, was killed May 23 after a struggle erupted between him and Sgt. Randall Wetzel along the Garden State Parkway in Bass River, N.J., part of which was captured on video by a dashboard camera.
Wetzel used pepper spray and fired his handgun six times, according to the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office. The encounter is under criminal investigation and must, by law, be presented to a grand jury.
Gordon, a native of Jamaica who was studying chemistry at Dutchess Community College, was black; Wetzel, who is on administrative leave due to the shooting, is white.
The fatal shooting in New Jersey happened two days before the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Floyd, who was black, died after a white police officer pressed a knee into Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes as Floyd was lying on the ground, handcuffed. Floyd’s death has set off protests large and small across the county and in some foreign countries.
Barrett described her son as a hard-working Christian who loved his life in America, where he moved when he was 19. She said she still finds herself texting him. Barrett traveled to the United States from London, where she lives, after her son was killed and has stayed in a hotel.
“I’m angry, emotional, broken inside,” she said. “I haven’t come to terms with the whole situation. I’m still sending him text messages: ‘I’m here, I’m waiting for you.’ I just think he’s still here. I’m always on the phone looking at his pictures. I brought some pictures from the United Kingdom with me, and I’ve slept with them.”
William O. Wagstaff III, Barrett’s attorney, said Gordon would be alive if he were white.
The dashcam footage of the incident, released this week by New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal, included about a dozen audio and video files, though Wagstaff says roughly 12 minutes of footage was not released initially by the attorney general.
The Attorney General’s Office later released footage that shows what happened after the shooting. It includes the trooper and others discussing taking the trooper to the hospital because pepper spray blew back onto him.
Barrett said she also was grieving Floyd’s death, though she saw her son’s and Floyd’s deaths as “two separate cases.”
“The protest is good, especially for people of color,” she said of demonstrations. “I’m happy it’s going on at the moment because the world needs to see what it’s about. We need to be respected for what we are.
The interaction in New Jersey unfolded about 6:30 a.m. when Wetzel stopped Gordon for going 110 mph on the Garden State Parkway. Wetzel is not heard
placing Gordon under arrest in the released audio/ video footage.
The footage leading up to the shooting shows Gordon sitting in the back of the trooper’s car, where the men discuss a tow truck for Gordon’s vehicle, which failed to start after the traffic stop.
The fatal interaction can
be heard through a microphone but occurs outside the vehicle and mostly out of the camera’s range. There are sounds of a struggle before the pop of the shots. Wetzel can be heard telling another official who arrives after the shooting that Gordon tried to grab his gun.
Wetzel placed handcuffs on Gordon after he was shot.
The attorney general has not given a timeline for how long the investigation might take.