Burglary charges pulled after offifficer killed Jones
PALM BEACH GARDENS — Spurred by a rash of car breakins, three undercover offifficers in a gated city neighborhood watched two men moving stealthily from driveway to driveway, checking out cars.
Rather than move in, the undercover offifficers called for uniformed backup.
Among the offifficers who responded and played a role in the Oct. 7 arrests: Nouman Raja, the offifficer who shot and killed Corey Jones 11 days later.
Raja alone conducted the initial interview of the two men, who confessed and turned over stolen items to police, police reports said. Police recommended felony burglary charges against both men.
But fifive days after Raja shot Jones, the State Attorney’s Offiffice dropped three
Investigators looking into the death of Corey Jones are focusing on offifficer Nouman Raja’s decision to shoot the 31-year-old drummer after an initial flflurry of gunshots, The Palm Beach Post has learned.
Evidence indicates Jones may have dropped his weapon when the Palm Beach Gardens offifficer fifired the fatal shot, according to interviews with Jones’ family, their lawyers and a source with knowledge of last week’s incident, which has captured national attention.
At its heart: Why was Jones’ gun found so far from his body?
of the four charges facing each man. That same day, police arrested them again, charging them in a Sept. 30 burglary.
The State Attorney’s Office would not comment on why they dropped the charges against the men — Devonte J. Lillard, 20, of Jupiter, and Antuion Ronnie Lee, 21, of Tequesta. They cited an open investigation.
The city endured 71 car break-ins between Oct. 1 and Oct. 18, a Palm Beach Post analysis of police reports showed. The break-ins were clustered in neighborhoods within about 2 miles of the PGA Boulevard-Interstate 95 intersection where Jones was shot.
About 3:15 a.m. Oct. 18, Raja, in plain clothes and an unmarked car, was investigating the car burglaries near the PGA Boulevard offramp when he encountered Jones. Police said Raja believed he was approaching an abandoned car.
Police have not said exactly where Raja was conducting surveillance that night or if he reported the abandoned car before he approached it. He encountered an armed Jones and fired six shots, three hitting Jones and killing him.
Auto burglary arrest reports from early October reveal that a team of city officers called the Tactical Crime Suppression Unit had been active since at least Oct. 7.
Raja’s actions are in contrast to the work of the three undercover officers at the Paloma development southwest of Hood Road and Military Trail.
Rather than move in on the suspects, they called uniformed backup to make the initial stops.
Lillard and Lee told Raja they traveled to Palm Beach Gardens and entered neighborhoods on foot looking for unlocked cars. Many reports indicate they or other burglars found little of value. In the 71 burglaries, police reported more than $50,000 in cash and items stolen.
Lillard and Lee told Raja they had burglarized 10 cars and tried to burglarize an additional 30.
But most of the charges stemming from that interview were not filed.
Lillard’s mother, Kelly, said she didn’t even know any charges had been dropped. Police called him and told him to come pick up his cellphone, which was still at the jail. That’s when they booked him on new charges.
“They just arrested him as soon as he got there,” Kelly Lillard said. “We had no idea about what was going on.”
Lillard told The Palm Beach Post on Tuesday he was reinterviewed Friday and asked the same questions Raja had asked him Oct. 7.
Palm Beach Gardens police would not respond to questions about the car burglaries or about the cit y’s policies for plainclothes officers and whether Raja violated any of those policies when he approached Jones.
On Tuesday, after repeated media requests, the city posted to its website its entire police department Policy and Standards manual.
The policies don’t dictate specific protocols for plainclothes officers, but do say that a designated sergeant should put together a surveillance plan and assign tasks to officers.
It hasn’t been revealed whether Raja called for backup before the shooting.
Benjamin Crump, a civil rights attorney representing the Jones family, criticized Raja for approaching Jones instead of waiting for uni- formed backup.
“What is the policy so the people in South Florida will understand that if you’re ever approached by an un-uniformed cop, how do we really know he’s a cop?” Crump said. “Isn’t the burden on the cop to make sure that the citizen knows he’s a real cop?”