The New Jersey undercover cop who killed black bank executive DeFarra “Dean” Gaymon of Atlanta, stated that he did so in self-defense after Gaymon allegedly propositioned him sexually, then threatened to kill him if he arrested him.
Gaymon, who was president and CEO of the Credit Union of Atlanta, was in the Newark, N.J., area for his 30th high school reunion. But while his former classmates were getting reacquainted at Montclair High School, Gaymon was fighting for his life at University Hospital with a single gunshot wound to the chest. He lost that fight a short while later.
Since there are no other known witnesses, there is only one account of the altercation in the park that many locals say is notorious for homosexual activity: the officer’s.
The officer, whom prosecutors refuse to identify since he works undercover, said he had returned to the park alone around 6 p.m. after a previous arrest in the area to search for his handcuffs that he dropped. The officer and his partner were patrolling the park in plainclothes as part of an operation that had been going on for years, the New York Times reports. The paper also said that many residents living near the Branch Brook Park corroborate officers’ accounts that the area was a place where sexual encounters took place between men, including those of male prostitutes.
Prosecutors said that when the officer bent down to retrieve his lost handcuffs, Gaymon approached him “engaging in a sexual act.”
“The officer pulled out his badge, identified himself as a police officer and informed Gaymon that he was under arrest,” Essex County Prosecutor Robert Laurino said. Then, he said, Gaymon shoved the officer to the ground and ran, ignored the officer’s demands to stop, and repeatedly threatened to kill the officer if he approached. The officer then cornered Gaymon beside a pond and tried to handcuff him, Laurino said, but again Gaymon resisted.
“Mr. Gaymon reached into his pocket and lunged at the officer in an attempt to disarm the officer,” Laurino told the Times. The officer, “fearing for his life,” the prosecutor said, shot Gaymon once, and he died at the hospital three hours later.
The family calls the officer’s account a blatant lie. The officer, who shot Gaymon on Friday, July 16, did not give a statement until July 19 because he was medicated for trauma over the weekend.
Gaymon leaves behind a wife and four children. He was a member of the Montclair High School class of 1980. –terry shropshire
