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Little Girls Lost

By Janiah X Adams -Contributing Writer- | Last updated: May 11, 2016 - 12:28:18 PM

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‘You chased them … watched them die’

A month after tragic deaths, charges police didn’t do enough to save three Black girls

Attorney Will Anderson listens as Natasha Winkler, mother of the late Laniya Miller, center, talks to the media April 11 at the Pinellas County Justice Center. On her right is Candica Thornton, Miller’s aunt and attorney Michele Whitfield. Photo: Tampa Bay Times

Black activists and grieving relatives of three girls who drowned in what Pinellas County, Fla. sheriffs insist was not pursuit of a stolen car are in a tug of war with law enforcement. Later this month the mother of one girl will join a national protest to highlight the loss of her daughter and her friends.

Ciara Butler, seated, mother of Ashaunti Butler, 15, one of three girls who drowned after the stolen car they were driving went into a pond while being pursued by Pinellas County Sheriff’s deputies on March 31, is comforted by Butler’s aunt, Sadiyyah Butler, right. During a news conference at the Uhuru House in St. Petersburg. In the background is community organizer Ashley Green. Omali Yeshitela, founder of the Uhuru Movement, called for the resignation of Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri. Photo: Tampa Bay Times

Blacks in St. Petersburg, Fla., want transparency and justice following the deaths of Dominique Battle, 16, LaNiya Miller, 15, and Ashaunti Butler, 15. The girls died after a gold Honda Accord crashed into a cemetery pond with sheriffs chasing what they called a stolen vehicle. The day of the incident, Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri told reporters, “Our sheriff’s office followed the car as they entered the cemetery and was going about 30 to 35 miles an hour.” Police dash cam video showed deputies were going speeds up to 93 miles per hour. The girls drove through heavy vegetation and the car plunged into a pond that was about 15 feet deep. They died.

“The mosque is leading the charge to help comfort the family,” said Ali Muhammad of the Nation of Islam mosque in St. Petersburg. “The whole city is devastated because the police have shown no integrity. This dash cam shows they lied and it puts the community in a state to see that they allowed them to drown to their death. The community is in a state of confusion and it leads to doubt about the integrity of the police department.”

Several relatives of the girls came to Muhammad Mosque No. 92 on a recent Sunday. “They’re hurt that the sheriff’s department said that they tried to save the girls, but the dash cam shows that they didn’t,” said Student Minister Muhammad.

Passion Moore, age 16, (r) holds her candle and remembers her three friends at a vigil in Campbell Park in St. Petersburg April 2. Laniya D. Miller, 15, Ashaunti Butler, 15, and Dominique Battle, 16, died after plunging a stolen car into a pond in St. Petersburg. Photo: Tampa Bay Times

According to authorities, the Honda Accord was spotted with its lights off after 3 a.m. A sergeant turned on emergency lights and sirens, trying to pull the car over. The driver refused to stop. Within seconds, following police policy, the sergeant didn’t pursue the car, authorities said. The car was spotted again minutes later by a different sergeant, who ran its plates and discovered it was stolen. He called for backup. Officers followed the car and the girls veered into the cemetery, missing a curve and splashing into the pond. Initial reports from Sheriff Gualtieri and written reports said deputies waded into the dark, murky water, attempting a rescue.

“The vehicle began listing forward, at which point, I took off my duty belt and attempted to swim out to the vehicle. I made it approximately 10-15 yards out; however, at this point the vehicle was facing front bumper down and was completely submerged within seconds. Due to the unknown depth, thick vegetation and officer safety concerns, I had no choice but to exit the water and suspend my rescue efforts,” Deputy Logan Tromer, who also happens to be on the Sheriff’s Office dive team, told the Associated Press.

But dash cam video released showed deputies standing around and some are heard saying the girls are dead. Many Blacks angrily declare deputies did too little and let the girls lose their lives. Several weeks after the March 31 tragedy, Sheriff Gualtieri angrily defended deputies during a press conference. He condemned “extensive misinformation going on by a number of people with this false narrative, which is just nonsense.” His office released police reports, videos and crash reports saying the first videos had been misconstrued.

Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri speaks during press conference March 31.

The sheriff was not happy with the way things were being portrayed, said Sgt. Spencer Gross, a Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson. “Some media outlets were only showing some portions of the videos, some accusations were being made online by different people, so we released a small portion of the video. We edited it down because many people were claiming they didn’t see the deputies going in to save the girls on video, but it’s documented that they did. And there’s video that shows them shortly after the pond walking in front of the camera with their clothes and gun belts off.

“That specific portion of the video, to our knowledge, had not been shown. We found that some media outlets hadn’t even read those portions of the reports that the deputies went into the water,” he said.

Screenshot of dashcam video the night three Black girls died after car plunged into a cemetery pond.

No faith in police accounts?

“I think what is clear to us in the Uhuru Movement is that they murdered those girls,” charged Omali Yeshitela, a longtime activist and leader of the St. Petersburg-based International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement.

Chairman Yeshitela and members of the Uhuru Movement and other activists outline demands during press conference.

The Bay Area Dream Defenders, the Nation of Islam and the Uhuru Movement held an April 28 press conference. They demanded the immediate resignation of Sheriff Gualtieri, partially for what they called slandering the girls after their deaths. Lies were told and the sheriff’s department suffers from a culture of violence, said Mr. Yeshitela.

“That’s what’s not being talked about at all. Anybody who saw the pictures of that car when it was pulled from the pond, the rear bumper is damaged which is consistent with what is called the PIT maneuver,” he continued. The PIT maneuver, or Precision Immobilization Technique, is a tactic by which a pursuing police car can cause a fleeing car to lose control by tapping the rear of the car, Mr. Yeshitela said.

Sherriff Gualtieri has vigorously denied that happened.

“The real issue is that they were murdered and there’s a history in terms of the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Department and the St. Petersburg Police Department that’s not being discussed,” the activist argued. “One of the officers at the scene had himself been involved in a homicide a few years ago by another African teenager who also drowned. … What we are demanding and pushing for is not only the resignation of Gualtieri, but Black control of the police. Our security can never be controlled as long as this White Power police organization have the authority to walk our communities armed with impunity.”

According to Sgt. Gross, Sherriff Gualtieri will not be resigning.

Grieving mothers, aunts, friends remember girls

Yashica Clemmons, the mother of Dominique Battle, has a difficult time getting out of bed.

“It’s hard,” said Ms. Clemmons. “We’re not handling it very well at all. It’s very hard and very stressful and I have an eight-year-old and a one-year-old and it’s hard for them as well for her not to be there. They’re used to going to bed at night and she’s there and waking up and she’s there. There are some days I can’t even get up out the bed because I’m so depressed and so hurt because of all of this.”

Ms. Clemmons remembers her daughter as easygoing, funny, someone people loved having around. “She called her dimples angel kisses and she said when she was a baby, an angel came and kissed her on her cheeks,” Ms. Clemmons recalled. “She always helped with her brothers and sisters, always picked them up from daycare when I needed her to. She loved shopping and being with her friends and going to the movies. She was just a very bright young lady. She wanted to be a pediatrician when she got older and she always talked about being in the doctor’s office or nurse.

“She loved babies. My friends would call on her to babysit because she was good with kids. She was an amazing young lady. She loved to help. When her friends came over, she always made sure they ate and she always provided soaps and haircare stuff for her friends. She was just so full of life.”

Screenshot of Honda Accord pulled from water.

That characterization of Dominique and her two friends in the car that fatal night was far different from the sheriffs’ description which pointed to several arrests the girls had for car thefts. According to Ms. Clemmons, the thing Dominique struggled with was school.

“She just didn’t like sitting in the classroom,” Ms. Clemmons said. “In the public, they have her presented as this young lady who didn’t have any life or any happiness, like a criminal and that’s not true. They belittled her and put her out of character and made her seem like she was someone who she wasn’t. Everything that they’re saying is incorrect. Calling her like a known car thief, and the things that they’re saying and putting her mug shots up. … Yeah, she stole a car before but she already paid for that. She didn’t serve time before. So how can they say that she’s a known car stealer?”

Shauntia Elias-Hyman, a cousin of Ashaunti Butler, described the girl’s mother as devastated. “She can’t work, she can’t take care of her other children the way she used to.”

Arkeishah Elias, another older cousin, referred to Ashaunti as her little baby. “Ashanti is my little cousin, that was my little baby,” Ms. Elias said. “They portrayed her in the paper like she was a bad person, she wasn’t like that. They tried to make it seem like they were these bad children. What they did was nasty and wrong. They didn’t have no business putting their picture on the news, no business talking about them like that. They just want to make it seem like they’re just three people gone, but those were my little cousins.”Kashonda Cummings, 17, went to school with Ashaunti and Dominique since the 2nd grade, and she met LaNiya just last year. The girls were sophomores in high school.

“Shaunti and Dominique, they wasn’t really in trouble,” said the teenager. “They went to school and got good grades and they had a lot of friends and just wanted to be friendly. Niya just wanted friends and people to be there for her.”

LaNiya Miller had moved from her father’s home in Wisconsin to St. Petersburg to live with her grandmother, Kristine Hayes, and mother, Natasha Winkler, for a fresh start.

“LaNiya was a beautiful person,” Ms. Winkler said through tears during a press conference. “She was my baby. She was loving and caring. She was the type of person to give her friend the clothes off of her back.”

Ms. Winkler recalled how sometimes, LaNiya would pretend to be hungry so that she could sneak food to friends who didn’t have what she had.

“She should not be remembered as a thief, because that’s not who she was,” Ms. Winkler said.

Demands for police accountability

“They’re lying,” said Arkeishah Elias fighting back tears. “They never tried to go in. They could’ve did anything. The car sat on the water for too long for them to not do anything. They never tried to help them. Them girls suffered, they literally suffered. I can’t even talk. They died a horrible death. What we’re trying to do is get all of them an apology and let them know they’re not taking no more Black children’s lives. They took my cousin’s life, and she’s not here no more.

“You chased them and sat there and watched them die, and you say you hear somebody screaming, but you never went to go help them. Too many people just laying down on stuff like this. People die every day behind nothing. They supposed to help them because we would have helped them. I know I would have. I’m just angry.”

Ms. Clemmons wants the sheriff’s office held accountable for the deaths, especially Sherriff Gualtieri. “He doesn’t get to decide who lives and who doesn’t live,” she said. “And that’s what he did. He decided. He gave out the certificates and said that they did their job and that’s why I want him personally. He’s on the top list where he needs to be brought down first. Those police officers are in there now, I want them out of office. I want a petition to go around so we can vote and get them out of office. Those officers have no business to continue as police officers when they failed to do their job. I would like to see justice served for those young ladies, all three of them.”

Police say the girls were getting a ride from a man who stopped at a Walmart, left his car running and found it gone when he exited the store. Some family members and activists have questioned the man’s story.

Antwan Windom lights a candle for his daughter, Laniya Miller, at a vigil in Campbell Park in St. Petersburg, April 2. Photo: Tampa Bay Times

How long will Blacks wait for demands to be met? “We’re not waiting for anything. That’s over. We don’t wait. We’re involved in a serious struggle with them. It’s not a matter of waiting,” Mr. Yeshitela said.

The Uhuru Movement has worked to have Yashica Clemmons, Dominique’s mother, speak May 21 at National African Liberation Day at Howard University in Washington, D.C.

“We want everyone to become intimately familiar with this case and we want everyone to meet this woman because the media has done everything to dehumanize her,” Mr. Yeshitela said. “She is a part of our community who has been wounded by the loss of these three girls.”

Ashley Green of the Bay Area Dream Defenders is working with some of the parents to solve problems in the community. They are looking at police accountability, alternatives for at-risk children and neighborhoods and crisis resolution centers. Members of the victims’ families want an apology from the officers.

“Many of the solutions we’ve seen are focusing on the negative like jail time and harsher punishments and these have not worked in our community,” said Ms. Green. “None of it has been focusing on healing. We attended a vigil along with some folks from the Nation for a young man whose life was taken and a lot of the conversation was surrounding how these individuals are failing but not on how we as a community are failing. There’s a lot of shaming of parents and the kids and frankly, we’re just sick of it. We need real spaces where we can have honest conversation. That’s what’s gotten us connected with the Nation.”

According to the Pinellas County Sherriff’s Department, the investigation is ongoing, however once toxicology reports are in, it will close. Sherriff Gualtieri insists his officers did nothing wrong.

Michele Whitfield, an attorney for LaNiya Miller’s family, is leading an independent probe of the deaths.

“Right now, we’re in the process of an ongoing investigation and reviewing public documents from the sheriff’s department,” Ms. Whitfield said. “I have made a request of documents from the sheriff’s department that they say they have it in their possession, but they’re asking for $2,000 for me to obtain them, and it’s rather cumbersome.”

Ms. Whitfield is going back and forth with the sheriff’s department concerning access to these documents, which include records regarding vehicle and unreleased dash cam videos.

“The sheriff picks and chooses what he wants to give us,” Ms. Whitfield said. “We have a different take on the public records statute. It’s to be transparent and honest and open and you are to charge 15 cents per page, per copy. Their fee schedule is not in line with the statute.”

Ms. Whitfield said there are discrepancies in the case.

“Initially, the sheriff indicated that they weren’t chasing the girls; they have a policy not to chase nonviolent offenders, that their sirens were not on. But when the sheriff released the dash cam, the sirens were on and the vehicles were at speeds up to 90 miles per hour,” Ms. Whitfield said. She has the full dash cam video from that night and said she does not see deputies actually in the water.

“I actually have info that says otherwise,” she said. “Our other issue is when those girls died, immediately the sheriff took it upon himself to have a smear campaign. People knew about these girls’ criminal records before their parents knew they were dead. He used it to bolster his task force to come back.”

The sheriff has said the area has an epidemic of car thefts and Atty. Whitfield charges he would like to get a juvenile auto theft crime task force funded again.

Activists outside of Florida who work with Black females said Black girls are increasingly criminalized and dehumanized. Funding and services for Black girls are lacking, they added.

“We understand that this case is bigger than Pinellas County,” Mr. Yeshitela said. “It is akin to the struggle the Black community has been faced with recently with police coming into our communities and attacking us with impunity and the criminals becoming the heroes and the heroes becoming the criminals.”