An unarmed African American bank executive from suburban Atlanta was shot and killed by an undercover sheriff’s deputy in Newark, N.J.’s Branch Brook Park Friday. It has not been determined what occurred prior to the 48-year-old Defarra “Dean” Gaymon being shot once in the chest.
Gaymon was pronounced dead at Newark’s University Hospital after 9 p.m. The officer, whose name has not been released, was also taken to University Hospital but was medicated so officers were unable to question him.
Fox 5 Atlanta reports that County Prosecutor Robert Laurino said the officer was investigating complaints of sexual activity occurring in public when the deputy encountered Gaymon at approximately 6 p.m., Friday.
The media did report that locals have said the area of the park in question is the site of heavy homosexual activity.
Police, on the other hand, said they are still unclear why Gaymon, a native of the area who was in town for a class reunion, was in the park at that time. He was not in his pickup truck at the time of the fatal shooting. He was a resident of Suwanee, Ga., and was the president and CEO at Atlanta City Employees Credit Union.
Prosecutors and the sheriff’s office said they will investigate the incident, which happens to be the third police shooting in Newark in the past week and the fifth in the month of July.
The shooting will also be reviewed by a grand jury, which prosecutors say is standard procedure in police shootings.
It has yet to be determined if the U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder will initiate a review or investigation of why so many police shootings have involved white officers and unarmed black men. The most sensational such incident in recent years occurred in Oakland, Calif., when a white transit cop shot a black youth in the back even though he was lying on his stomach in handcuffs. That case set off two separate rounds of mob riots in the city. –terry shropshire
