February 22, 1986 Suffolk County prosecutors, saying they wanted to “clear the air,” plan next week to have a grand jury take up the fatal shooting last Saturday of a Greenlawn man by a police officer after the man allegedly tried to run him over.
“You had a high-speed chase on a well-traveled road and two people were shot, cars were going up telephone poles – it was not an ordinary occurrence,” Assistant District Attorney Michael Ahearn said in explaining the decision to put the case before the grand jury.
Alonzo Richardson, 24, was fatally shot by Highway Patrol Officer William Davis, who also fired the bullet that wounded Robert Brown, 22, of Smithtown, in the leg. Davis said he was trying to arrest Richardson on Route 25 in Smithtown following a high-speed chase, when, according to the officer, Richardson rammed his car into the police cruiser and then tried to run Davis over. Brown has disputed the police account.
The shooting took place just hours after Davis had responded to a wreck in Lake Grove – which police say was caused by a speeding drunk driver – that had left five people dead.
Ahearn said prosecutors will present all the evidence, including eyewitness testimony, vehicle inspections, and ballistics and autopsy reports, to the grand jury before deciding if any specific charges are to be submitted to the jurors.
Police and prosecutors said that in the past all fatal shootings by Suffolk police officers were presented to grand juries but more recent incidents have been decided on a case-by-case basis. In the last case, in which an alleged burglar was shot by an officer in Huntington Station in October, there was no grand jury presentation.
A law-enforcement source said yesterday that there is no belief that Davis acted improperly in the shooting but that the grand jury proceedings would allow the jurors to hear both the officer’s account and a conflicting account by Brown, the wounded passenger.
“It does appear an open-and-shut case,” Dep. Insp. Thomas Murphy, commander of the homicide squad, said yesterday. “I think he had justification.”
Brown said last weekend that “everything in the {police} story is a lie.” He said Richardson was not speeding and did not attempt to hit the officer. Yesterday, he referred all questions to his attorney, Robert Skigen.
Skigen said yesterday that he is conducting his own investigation into the incident – including the position of the two cars at the time of the shooting – and is studying the possibility of a civil suit against police at a later date.
“He’s made a lot of different statements at a lot of different times,” said Ahearn yesterday of Brown’s comments.
Richardson’s family has also retained an attorney, Henry B. Portnoy, to investigate the events surrounding the shooting.
Richardson, a mechanic at a repair shop in Huntington, was driving without a valid license at the time of the incident and had a blood-alcohol level of .18 percent, well above the legal intoxication level of .10 percent, according to police.
Davis has not been removed from active duty since the shooting, but his supervisor, Insp. Richard Dormer, said yesterday that the officer has been taking sick time because of leg injuries from the incident and is not back to work.
Dormer, who talked with Davis yesterday by phone, said, “He was very upset after the incident, and it bothered him because he’s a very sensitive guy.” Davis could not be reached for comment.
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