Att'y: Witness ID'd In Pace Student's Shooting
BOSTON (AP) -- A witness sought by authorities after she was seen on video trying to revive a college football player who was shot and killed by police has been found, a lawyer for the player's family said Thursday.
But attorney Michael Sussman declined to identify the woman during a telephone call with media outlets, saying it wouldn't be fair to her.
The woman appears in amateur video taken after this month's shooting of Danroy "D.J." Henry, a 20-year-old Pace University student from Easton. She's wearing a long, white sweater and doing chest compressions on someone, apparently Henry.
Investigators sought the woman as they try to sort out conflicting accounts of the shooting, in which two officers fired at Henry's moving car while responding to a disturbance outside a bar in Thornwood, N.Y., just north of New York City.
Sussman said the best way he could describe the woman was as a "bystander, unrelated to police authorities." He added that the video clearly shows the woman had some emergency training.
"That person did try, as is evidenced through the video, to administer CPR and lifesaving techniques until more official medical assistance came," he said.
Asked if he had spoken with her, Sussman said he couldn't say which witnesses he'd interviewed.
Police and witnesses, including some students, have offered vastly different accounts of what happened during the Oct. 17 shooting, and Sussman has called for the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate.
Police have said Henry sped away and hit two officers after a policeman knocked on his window. But Sussman has said their story is contradicted by eyewitness accounts from passengers in the car, including Henry's best friend, Brandon Cox, who was grazed by a police bullet.
Sussman said Thursday that Cox heard Henry's last words, "They shot me. They shot me." He also said a bent but intact bullet, likely the one that hit Cox, was found in Henry's Nissan.
A prominent attorney and Harvard Law School professor, Charles Ogletree, said Thursday he's working with Cox's family to investigate the shooting.
On Wednesday, Sussman said gunpowder evidence was gone from Henry's car by the time forensic experts examined it, which he said could complicate efforts to find out the distance from which the shots were fired. But on Thursday he expressed optimism about other ways to find that out.
"There really is not much dispute that shots were fired from the hood," he said. "The question, of course, is exactly where on the hood and what position was the shooter. What speed was the car going when this happened, if any speed?"
Henry's family said it would hold a memorial service for him in Boston on Friday, the day he was to turn 21.
"As so many people have been touched by D.J.'s passing and have expressed their sorrow, the Henry family chose to hold the event at a location where it could be open to the community in the city of Boston, which D.J. loved so dearly," the family said in statement.
Pace University said Thursday it would send three buses with nearly 170 students, faculty members and staffers to the service in Boston, which is about 25 miles north of Easton.
The Pace University football team plans to honor Henry at its first game since he was killed. The team's tribute, before its home game in Pleasantville, N.Y., against the University of New Haven on Saturday, will include a moment of silence, the university said Thursday.
The team also will symbolically play without Henry by fielding a squad of only 10 players, instead of 11, for the first defensive play of the game.
(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
