Renisha McBride’s Shooter Charged With Second-Degree Murder

After intense local agitation and a national media outcry, 54-year-old Ted Wafer has finally been charged for shooting Renisha McBride. From Michigan Radio:

Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy announced today that the man who shot 19-year-old Renisha McBride on his front porch in the early morning hours of November 2nd will be charged with murder in the second degree, manslaughter, and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony. Second degree murder is non-premeditated murder. It can carry a sentence in Michigan of up to life in prison.

Details of the night are still being withheld, but a few things seem to be clear. Renisha McBride got into a car accident shortly before 1 AM, when a 911 call reported a vehicle hitting a parked car, and a woman leaving on foot. She appeared, accurately, to be intoxicated, a fact which is now grossly taking precedence in some headlines.

McBride returned to her car before 1:30, then left before 1:40, when a police cruiser arrived on the scene to find the car abandoned. The accident took place approximately six blocks from Ted Wafer’s house. Early reports pinpoint the time of her shooting around 2:30. Her autopsy pins her death at around 2:45. Police initially told McBride’s family that her body was “dumped” elsewhere. Apparently, police are now stating that McBride was killed around 4 and found on Wafer’s porch.

There was no evidence of forced entry. According to Worthy’s statement, McBride, an unarmed 19-year-old girl, was shot through a locked door. Wafer states that his shotgun went off “accidentally,” but he definitely shot her in the face. Below is the post-4 AM 911 call between a dispatcher and a police officer, in which they report a man calling in to say that he shot someone on his porch, and then hanging up. They have to call Wafer back in order to find out the details.

It’s encouraging news that prosecutor Worthy has charged Wafer, as Michigan is a Stand Your Ground state and the current attorney general is a Republican who many suspect would sit on the case. Within this context, it seems especially important that police turn over more information than they seem to be willing to; three years ago, Worthy backed away from a similar case because of lack of information.

Talking to Democracy Now, local activist Dawud Walid explains. “We had a Michigan imam who was killed about three years ago by the FBI. He was shot 20 times, African American by the name of Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah. Kym Worthy, she refused to go forward and investigate that case, because the FBI refused to turn over certain information that Prosecutor Worthy wanted, which then it got kicked up — the case got kicked up to the Michigan attorney general at the time, former one, Mike Cox, who’s a Republican, who acquitted and found no wrongdoing by the FBI.”

At the Nation, Michal Denzel Smith writes, “We have been here before. Our history becomes our present so often it becomes difficult to distinguish the two. Politicians and cable news hosts and the naïvely colorblind ask us to forget, most of the country obliges, and black people, again, are left to piece together the fragments of history, suffering, rage, and pain so that we may have hope for something better.”