Local police have been receiving a lot of criticism for the fatal shooting of Pace University student Danroy Henry in Westchester last weekend. Eye witnesses claim that Henry was handcuffed and left on the road for up to 15 minutes without medical attention while medical teams treated a less seriously injured officer at the scene, and students who tried to help him were either Tasered or handcuffed, which police have denied. Now, police sources have revealed another complication in the story: according to the results of the autopsy of 20-year-old Henry, he was legally drunk at the time of the shooting, with a .13 blood alcohol level.
According to students with Henry that night, the underage football player was the designated driver for the evening, and was not drunk. Pace junior Christine Leone said that Henry "was with me the whole night and wasn't even drinking." Henry's family and their lawyers told a Boston television station that the release of the alcohol level seemed to be an attempt to sway public opinion against the student: "Even if it is true, my wife and I have said from the beginning that we want the whole truth. This becomes a part of that truth. But at the end of the day, the central question to us is, does that justify killing our son?...We still fundamentally believe it isn't," said Henry's father, Danroy Henry Sr., on Friday.
Henry's family also wanted to make clear that they didn't want their son's death becoming a racially-charged fight: "We don't want to make this a race issue. We just want the truth. We want the truth for our son," said Henry's mother, Angela Henry. Yesterday, the lawyer for six other Pace students arrested during the melee called on the Feds to begin an investigation, because of the incompetence of local police. Today, the US Attorney's Office said in a statement it and the FBI will review "available evidence to determine whether any federal criminal civil-rights laws have been violated."
