BREAKING NEWS: Garner’s attorney speaks out in HeeHaw case
Rockmart, Georgia – For the first time, we are hearing an on-the-record defense from the attorney representing Officer Trenton Garner, the Cedartown police officer who shot and killed HeeHaw during the search for a missing 12-year-old girl.
Attorney Molly Gillis told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that HeeHaw was “very aggressive” and charged toward officers and a police bloodhound after the search team entered his pasture. Gillis said HeeHaw was postured with his head up and that the officers believed he was going to harm them or the bloodhound.
According to Gillis, officers first attempted to use a Taser away from HeeHaw to distract or deter him. She said the attempt did not work and Garner then fired the shot that killed him.
Much of what Gillis is saying follows the account we have already seen in Garner’s incident report. Garner wrote that HeeHaw began charging toward the search team, causing the police bloodhound team to retreat. He said he tried to use his Taser before firing one round because he believed HeeHaw posed a threat.
Hannah Israel, HeeHaw’s mom, has disputed that description from the very beginning. She says HeeHaw was a bottle-fed, people-loving baby miniature donkey who had never shown aggression toward anyone. Her attorney, Christopher McCormick, says HeeHaw was galloping toward unfamiliar people in the same friendly and curious way he had approached people throughout his life.
Those are two dramatically different descriptions of the same moments, and the evidence that could help determine which account is accurate still has not been released.
McCormick told the AJC that he has repeatedly attempted to obtain the body-camera footage but was informed that it would not be released while the investigation remains pending. The AJC also requested the recording and was denied.
This is why Gillis speaking publicly matters. We are now hearing Garner’s defense directly from the attorney representing him, but we are still being asked to evaluate that defense without seeing the video that could show HeeHaw’s movements, the officers’ positions and exactly what happened before the fatal shot was fired.
The incident report and federal lawsuit are available to the public, along with photographs and videos showing how HeeHaw behaved around Hannah and other people. What the public has not been allowed to see is the body-camera footage documenting the encounter itself.
The Georgia Department of Agriculture’s Law Enforcement Division continues to investigate the shooting. Hannah has also filed a federal lawsuit against Garner alleging that her constitutional rights were violated. Those allegations have not been decided by a court.
We are not going to ignore Garner’s defense simply because many people disagree with it. His attorney has now placed that account before the public, and it deserves to be reported accurately. But an attorney’s statement is not the same thing as independently reviewable evidence, just as the allegations in a lawsuit are not findings by a judge or jury.
The body-camera footage could answer some of the most important questions in this case. Did HeeHaw charge the search team aggressively, or was he simply running toward unfamiliar people who had entered his pasture? How close was he when Garner fired? What did the other officers do, and how much time passed between the attempted use of the Taser and the gunshot?
Until that footage is released, we are left with two opposing accounts and a recording that remains outside public view.
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SOURCE: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution; Officer Trenton Garner’s incident report; federal civil complaint; Cedartown Police Department statements
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