Family members claimed Trice was unarmed

By Barb Ickes and Dustin Lemmon | Friday, April 18, 2008

Police and family members who say they witnessed the shooting of Kelton Trice are giving vastly different accounts of the moments leading up to the fatal shooting.

Trice was shot Wednesday by an East Moline police officer after the 21-year-old ran from a park near the home he shared with his grandmother at 1005 17th St. Police were attempting to serve an arrest warrant on Trice, who was wanted in connection with an armed robbery.

He is accused of shooting at East Moline police Sgt. Tom Peterson as he fled. The officer was released from the hospital Thursday, and police said he was spared serious injury or death because he was wearing  a bulletproof vest and the shots hit him in the chest.

Peterson, a former middle school liaison officer, then shot Trice, police said.

Sitting in the pool of blood where his cousin fell — eyes swollen from crying — Joe Williams, 20, said Thursday that he saw the officer shoot Trice. He insisted that his cousin, who turned 21 on Monday, had no gun.

Police have said that two guns were found at the scene, including one that would not have been used by a police officer.

“I’m positive,” Williams said. “He (Trice) didn’t have no gun. I’d just been wrestling with him at the park. He didn’t have no gun.”

He said the police sergeant was accidentally shot by another officer.

“The other cop was in the line of fire with the other cop,” he said. “I saw my cousin go down. The officer walked up and shot him three or four more times.

“They put handcuffs on him after that and let him lay there for 10 more minutes, bleeding to death. They put the cop in the ambulance and then came and took the cuffs off, rolled my man over and tried to resuscitate him.”

Williams, along with a woman who also claimed to have witnessed the shooting, said the first shots were fired just outside the park, which is about two blocks from where Trice fell.

As many as a dozen police officers and crime scene investigators, some using dogs, continued early Thursday to search for more evidence, including, one officer said, additional shell casings.

Officials from the new Rock Island County Integrity Task Force said that six casings were recovered from the area where Trice died, and two spent rounds were recovered from inside Peterson’s vest.

Trice’s grandmother, Maggie Trice, said she also witnessed the shooting.

She said her grandson was trying to get to her house when police shot him. She received a telephone call and was told police were shooting at her grandson and said she heard a shot before going to the door.

“I was begging for the police don’t shoot my child,” she said.

Trice said her grandson was shot at least twice, and doctors told her one bullet hit his heart. She did not see the entire incident and did not see her grandson shoot at police.

Rock Island County Coroner Sharon Anderson said an autopsy was being performed Thursday afternoon in Rockford, Ill. That procedure should reveal the number of shots that struck Trice.

“I think he was on the ground when they shot him the second time,” his grandmother said.

After the shooting, Trice saw police giving her grandson mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but she said she knew he was already dead. She said police would not let her out the door of the house until her grandson was being loaded into an ambulance.

She was then kept outside her home until about 3 a.m. Thursday.

“I think police could have handled it better without killing him,” she said. “I was not aware of him having a gun.”

She and Williams both said Trice was popular in the community and known for his kindness.

Williams said Trice’s popularity was part of the reason so many people from the neighborhood continued to descend upon the scene Thursday. A small cross was pushed into the ground next to the pooling and the smeared bloodstains. Some brought flowers. One person left a partial 40-ounce beer next to the cross.

As police moved their search from the area of the park to the immediate shooting scene, which was in an alley adjoining Trice’s yard, the crowd grew agitated. Some of those who sat on curbs around Trice’s house shouted accusations at officers.

Maggie Trice acknowledged that her grandson had criminal convictions, including one for reckless discharge of a firearm, but she said most of his crimes were not of a violent nature. She said he had frequent run-ins with police.

“Every time he made a move, they’d pick on him,” she said.

Williams said the repeated gunshots were unnecessary and wonders whether his cousin’s life could have been saved if police had acted sooner.

“I knew my cousin was dead when they finally got him on the stretcher,” he said. “I seen his face.”

Barb Ickes can be contacted at (563) 383-2316 or bickes@qctimes.com. Dustin Lemmon can be contacted at (563) 383-2493 or dlemmon@qctimes.com.