SOUTH SACRAMENTO — A grieving family is desperate for answers from Sacramento Police just days after their grandson was shot and killed in his own backyard.
“My granddaughter was laying right there on the couch,” said Sequita Thompson.
Thompson showed FOX40 where she was Sunday night inside her home on 29th Street, when police gunfire erupted in her backyard.
“I went to the floor, and I mean it was fast, there was a lot of them. It just went ‘pow, pow, pow,'” Thompson told FOX40, recalling the shooting.
She grabbed her granddaughter and crawled into her husband’s room.
“He was saying, ‘Somebody was calling me through the window,'” Thompson said.
Her husband, Tommy Thompson, said he knew by the voice that it was his grandson, 22-year-old Stephon Clark, knocking on his window to be let inside. The disabled elderly couple uses their garage door opener to admit guests.
“Like, ‘Bang, bang, Tommy T.’ Then that’s the last I heard,” Tommy Thompson said.
After hearing the gunshots they called 911 — but police officers were already there. Sometime later officers entered the home to interview everyone inside.
“They finally told me, hours later, that there was a victim dead in my backyard,” Sequita Thompson said.
What both husband and wife did not know at the time was the man police had shot and killed in her backyard was their own grandson. Officers insisted they didn’t look out their own back window but, eventually, Clark’s grandmother did.
“He was right there, dead,” she said. “And I told the officers, ‘You guys are murderers, murderers.'”
“We can confirm that there was no firearm found,” said Sacramento Police Chief Daniel Hahn.
Hahn said the two officers who opened fire did have body cameras on at the time. His department is working fast to release video of the confrontation to the public.
“When we release the video people will be able to see what the video shows and then they can see with their own eyes what happened,” Hahn said.
The department said the officers issued commands to Clark in the front of the house but he ran off to the backyard. Later, police said a sheriff’s department helicopter told officers he came at the officers with a toolbar in his hand, which is when they felt in danger and opened fire.
Police said no toolbar was found at the scene, but a cinderblock and a piece of aluminum were found next to a neighbor’s broken glass door.
But both Tommy and Sequita Thompson say they never heard police say anything before pulling the trigger.
“You could have said ‘halt.’ You all didn’t say ‘halt.’ I heard the gunshots,” Sequita Thompson said. “They took him, and them two officers, they know it. God don’t forget. They’re going to reap what they sow. Watch, they’re going to reap what they sow.”
Clark’s grandmother and friends held a demonstration Tuesday at the State Capitol building. Activists will also be going to city hall for Tuesday night’s city council meeting.
