Vonderrit, without a gun, buying a sandwich moments before being killed by St. Louis Police

Vonderrit, without a gun, buying a sandwich moments before being killed by St. Louis Police

On October 8, 2014, VonDerrit Myers, who was beloved by his family and community, was shot and killed by off-duty St. Louis Police Officer Jason Flanery, who was working as a paid private patrolman. For the past year since Myers was murdered, nobody in the community has felt like the official police story added up. Two days after he was killed, I concluded the same thing in a thorough breakdown of his last hour alive

Yesterday, writers for the St. Louis American broke a very important story that may truly provide some extra insight into what could've happened on October 8 in the police shooting death of Myers.



On September 23, a St. Louis city jury acquitted 20-year-old Keyon Bennett, who is black, of all four felony charges for which he was charged, based on the testimony of a white city police officer. The jury did not believe that on June 11, 2014 Bennett pointed a gun at Officer James Zwilling before he fired one or possibly more shots at Bennett in the Greater Ville neighborhood. They did not believe that Bennett was carrying a gun at all, as Zwilling testified. The other officer who assisted Zwilling that day was Officer Jason Flanery, who shot and killed VonDerrit Myers Jr. less than four months later while working private security in the Shaw neighborhood on October 8, 2014.

Let me translate that for those of you that may not be living and breathing this case.

A young brother named Keyon Bennett was arrested on four felony counts stemming from aiming and firing a weapon at a St. Louis Police officer, but when it went to court last week, the jury flat out concluded that the officer made the whole damn thing up and dropped all of the charges.

All by itself, that is newsworthy. That never happens. In fact, I can't recall another instance where this has happened.

All things considered, prosecutors should now press charges against Officer James Zwilling—but that's not really how St. Louis rolls. They literally have a corrupt cop as their spokesperson.

Now, this becomes extremely relevant for Myers because the man who killed him, Jason Flanery, was with Officer James Zwilling when he basically attempted to frame Keyon Bennett.

It's doubly relevant because what the jury believed Officer James Zwilling was lying about is almost completely identical to the story Jason Flanery gave for why he chased, shot, and killed Vonderrit Myers. It's uncanny how similar the stories are.

If Zwilling was willing to frame an innocent man and Flanery went along with it, it's not illogical that Flanery would be willing to pull this mess on his own as well.

Myers, 18, had just purchased a sandwich with his friends from the local Shaw Market on the night he was shot and killed. In an interview with Matt Pearce of the Los Angeles Times, the manager of the market, Berhe Beyet, said:



Like six minutes after I sold him a sandwich, he got shot... He wasn't armed when he was here. He didn't have a hoodie.

This observation from the store manager is confirmed by the still images and recently released video of Myers and two of his friends taken just minutes before he was killed. It raises a series of questions about exactly what transpired between the time Myers purchased a sandwich, not wearing a hoodie, and then got shot at 17 times by a St. Louis police officer just minutes late—in possession of a gun and wearing a hoodie.

This is essential because jurors in the case of Keyon Bennett believed that police may have planted a gun on him.

Below the fold is the video from the Shaw Market.