Deputies kill brother of black man found hanging from tree
ROSAMOND — Terron Boone was distraught when his younger brother was found hanging from a tree in a park near Palmdale’s City Hall last week.
The manner of death of 24-year-old Robert Fuller evoked ugly images of the nation’s racist legacy of lynchings and sparked outrage when Los Angeles County coroner’s and sheriff ’s officials quickly listed it as a suicide. Protests generated national attention and prompted local authorities to involve state and federal investigators.
Then on Wednesday, exactly a week after his brother’s body was found, Boone, 31, was shot and killed by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies in what authorities described as a wild shootout in this desert town north of Palmdale.
The shooting ended a bizarre series of events in which authorities accused Boone of pistol-whipping, imprisoning and threatening a former girlfriend over a weeklong period.
It is unclear what, if any, connection Boone’s shooting had to his brother’s death, and many questions remain.
But the back-to-back tragedies have heightened an already tense environment coming amid a national furor over the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody and other racial injustices in the Antelope Valley and beyond.
“Another name. Who wants another name? Another hashtag. Terron, his brother, another name,” Isabele Flax, a 24-year-old activist from Lancaster, said at a news conference Thursday demanding justice for Fuller. “Who cares the circumstance? It doesn’t even matter what he did anymore. It doesn’t matter what they do anymore. It does not matter.”
Friends of Boone said they could not reconcile the man they knew — a fun-loving “fashion junkie” who uplifted people with his hip-hop music — with the violent crimes he was charged with committing and the way he died.
Some friends say that he was greatly disturbed by his brother’s death.
Tony Storey, who said he’d been friends with Boone since they were both around 16 in Palmdale, said he reached out to Boone after hearing about Fuller’s death and never heard back. He later noticed Boone had unfollowed him and nearly all his friends on Instagram and set his account to private, which was uncharacteristic for him.
“He went silent about two weeks ago, and I believe it was because he was in extreme pain,” added another friend, Nyki Walker, 29.
Authorities said the investigation involving Boone began Monday after a report that he held the former girlfriend, with whom he had an on-and-off relationship, at her home against her will. Sheriff ’s Lt. Robert Westphal said he had no information about Boone’s motivations and that “so far this is a standalone incident.”
Court records show that Boone was charged Tuesday with multiple criminal counts, including six counts of making criminal threats, four counts of abusing a cohabitant, two counts of false imprisonment and one count of assault with a deadly weapon. The alleged offenses took place over a seven-day period. A warrant was issued for his arrest.