Carnage at the chemist
Was he an innocent pharmacist or a cold-blooded murderer?
He took a second gun from the drawer
When ex-army colonel Jerome Ersland arrived at work on 19 May 2009, he expected it to be like any other day.
Working alongside two female colleagues, Jerome, 57, was a chemist at the Reliable Discount Pharmacy in south Oklahoma City.
But that afternoon, two men in ski masks burst into the store, waving a gun and demanding cash and drugs.
Jerome and the two employees froze. Then, with Jerome telling his colleagues to go, they rushed into the back of the store.
But Jerome – who wore a back brace following an injury – stayed, producing a semi-automatic pistol from his pocket.
As the two would-be robbers began to run, a bullet from the gun smashed Antwun Parker, 16, in the back of the head. He collapsed, unconscious. Jerome followed the other young man, Jevontai Ingram, spraying bullets at him – but he escaped.
Returning to the pharmacy, Jerome found Parker lying on the floor.
It was then that he walked towards another drawer to take out a second gun. Bang! The sound of five gunshots reverberated between the walls of the pharmacy.
Parker was dead.
Within days, Jerome was arrested for his murder.
But had he been rightly defending his workplace and his colleagues, or did he take it one step too far?
A police investigation began, with officers gathering evidence, including CCTV footage from the pharmacy.
Jerome managed to raise the $100,000 bail (around £80,000).
He went on TV, admitted coming back to the pharmacy and firing five shots into Parker’s abdomen, but said he’d done so because he reckoned Parker was about to get up and kill him. ‘I went up to him and he seemed to be just dazed. And he started talking to me, he started turning to the right. I was crippled, I thought I was going to get killed in the next few seconds.’ He also argued that he believed one of the shooters had tried to kill one of his colleagues, Megan West. ‘I still think he had a gun. I felt a sting on my hand and my watch fell off. I had a shot in my hand. I thought it came from that side and that was the side the girls were on and I thought that he shot Megan,’ he added. The police investigation culminated in a trial that began in May 2011. CCTV videos at the pharmacy showed Jerome Ersland walking back into the building after chasing Ingram and retrieving a second gun. He then leans over Parker’s body and fires the shots. The footage lasts for around 46 seconds. Under a minute for the group’s lives to change forever...
As Ersland stood in the dock, he denied the charge of first-degree murder, claimed he’d acted in self-defence.
An army of supporters stuck by him. They said what he’d done was right and that anybody would have acted the same way in his situation.
But prosecutors argued it was only Ersland who fired any shots. And they claimed that Parker was still unconscious from the initial shot to the back of the head.
Evidence showed he was unarmed, unconscious and on his back when Ersland fired into his abdomen.
Prosecutors said that with Parker incapacitated, Ersland’s actions went far beyond self-defence.
The state’s Chief Medical Examiner concluded that Parker had suffered a brain injury from the head shot but would have survived. It was the stomach wounds that killed him.
Megan West gave evidence during the trial.
In earlier testimony, she had spoken of her horror as the two masked robbers came into the
store and held them at gunpoint. As she and her mother, the other colleague, fled to the back of the chemist, they heard gunshots fired.
Then they heard fainter shots fired outside, then silence for a few moments, then more shots inside the store.
Ersland had claimed Parker was cursing and trying to get back up, but in court, Megan said she didn’t hear any noise from inside the store while Ersland was outside and before the final, fatal shots rang out.
Yet both Megan and her mum described Jerome Ersland as a ‘hero’ who saved their lives.
At the end of the trial, defence lawyer Irven Box asked jurors to close their eyes and imagine what they would do in the same situation.
‘He eliminated the armed robber,’ Box said.
Although prosecutors agreed that the first shot could have been self-defence, they argued the subsequent five shots were first-degree murder.
By the time all the evidence was heard and the jury was sent to deliberate, Jerome Ersland’s family and friends were rallying support.
But the chemist’s fate wasn’t their call... His future rested in the hands of the jury of eight women and four men.
They also had the option to find him guilty of a lesser charge of manslaughter.
Now it was up to them to decide...
In May 2011, the jury came back into the courtroom after more than three hours of deliberations. Some had tears in their eyes as it was announced that they’d found Jerome Ersland guilty of first-degree murder.
More than 17,000 supporters signed a petition dedicated to seeing him walk free. But in the July, County District Judge Ray Elliott sentenced Ersland to life in prison with no parole for at least 38 years.
His lawyers said they would appeal the conviction.
Ersland, wearing his striped jail uniform, yelled, ‘It’s an injustice of a monumental proportion!’ as he was escorted out of court.