Saturday October 04, 2003

Desiree Williams is just grateful she wasn't in the kitchen preparing a midnight snack, or that her 17-year-old, Jamal, wasn't sprawled on the living room floor watching TV when the police squad car crashed through the wall of their townhouse in eastern New Orleans early Friday.

"They'd have got both of us," Williams said later Friday as she ticked off a list of what she said was destroyed in the two rooms: kitchen table and chairs, living room furniture, a coffee table, a computer and a 27-inch console television, as well as one-of-a-kind family mementos.

Fortunately, Jamal was at his father's place near the lakefront and Williams was upstairs in her bedroom -- watching the movie, "Love and Bullets" -- when the cruiser crashed into the ground floor of her home at 4413 Flite St., just off Downman Road.

According to police, the incident began when 7th District officers Gary Degruy and Joseph Lane spotted two men who appeared to be breaking into a 1992 Nissan Pathfinder parked around the corner on Selma Street. When the officers jumped out of their squad car and ran after one of the men, the other one jumped into the police vehicle and, finding the keys still in the ignition, crashed into the townhouse while attempting a getaway, police say.

The man who police say jumped into the police car and crashed into the townhouse was identified in a lineup by one of the police officers Friday night. As a result, Williams' neighbor, Darryl Jones, 22, 4409 Flite St., who was arrested Friday morning after police say he was spotted trying to break into the Pathfinder, has been booked on additional charges of taking the police cruiser and running it into the townhouse.

Williams questions the police account. When she went downstairs to find out what had happened, no suspect was in sight, she said, but the two officers were beside the squad car, one of them standing, the other on the ground and both holding their necks.

She's convinced it was the officers who lost control of the vehicle.

"They lied," said Williams, adding that she thinks both officers should have been tested for drugs and alcohol.

When one of the officers came into her apartment shortly after the accident and said he wanted to search the place, Williams said her response was, "Search for what? You know nobody didn't come in this house." She said she didn't try to stop such a search, and the officer walked out.

Police spokesman Capt. Marlon Defillo said the on-scene investigation backs up the officers' story because their dark uniforms had no powder on them from the deployed airbags.

Friday morning, Williams' neighbor, Jones, was arrested on charges of burglarizing the Nissan Pathfinder, which had been taken to Van's Auto Repair at 4101 Downman Road.

Seventh District officers Borjius Guiente and Melvin Johnson responded to a call about the burglary and confronted Jones. Jones said the vehicle belonged to an aunt, who had asked him to retrieve some items from it, Defillo said.

When the real owner of the Pathfinder arrived at the repair shop, Jones was put in the back seat of Guiente's and Johnson's police car, where police said he became violent, kicking out the rear passenger side window and knocking both rear doors out of alignment.

Jones was to be booked for auto burglary, resisting arrest, two counts of battery on police officers and criminal damage to a police car in the Friday morning incident, police spokesman Sgt. Paul Accardo said. Charges tacked on Friday night after he was identified in the lineup include auto burglary, auto theft, possession of stolen property, felony hit-and-run, aggravated criminal damage to property and reckless driving.

Interviewed by phone from Central Lockup, Jones denied he was inside the Pathfinder Friday morning: "Ain't no way I'm going to be messing with that car, knowing the police were there last night," he said.

Jones said he was arrested Friday about 9 a.m. as he walked home from a nearby gas station, where he had gone to buy a cigar. As he passed the body shop, police pulled up and asked for his identification, which he didn't have on him, Jones said. When the repair shop owner mentioned that the Pathfinder had been broken into overnight, "The police said, 'You did it.' They shoved me in a car," Jones said.

Jones claims he did not intend to break the police car window. It happened, he said, as he was wrestling with an officer who was trying to shackle his feet, "and I was kicking."

Back