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Teen accused in 10-year-old's shooting death
June 10, 2008
By Jill Bryce (Contact)
Gazette Reporter

ALBANY — Albany police say a 15-year old boy is responsible for the shooting death of 10-year-old Kathina Thomas.
Detective James Miller, spokesman for the Department of Public Safety, confirmed this afternoon that the teen was being questioned by detectives at South Station in connection with the killing. He later issued a news release saying the Albany High School student would be formally charged later tonight.
Miller did not identify the teenager.
Kathina was killed May 29 after she was struck by a bullet in the back as she played. The bullet that killed her was believed to have been fired during a fight between gangs, police said. Miller said the weapon used to fire the shot that killed Kathina was not found.
Kathina was buried this morning in Graceland Cemetery. Her funeral Monday night at Blessed Hope Worship Center drew hundreds of people.

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Carl Strock THE VIEW FROM HERE
Gun story is chilling — if it’s true

    We have news from Albany of a 15-year-old boy admitting to firing a gun at a group of kids he thought were a danger to him, probably killing in the process the 10-yearold girl we have heard so much about.
    And we have the little aside in a statement the boy signed that when he was done he put the gun in a garbage can because, “everyone in the neighborhood uses that gun and that is where we keep it.”
    And isn’t that something to contemplate? A neighborhood gun at the Ida Yarbrough public housing complex. A semi-automatic handgun with black electrical tape wrapped around the handle, which a teenager could pick up when he felt the need or the desire or which anyone else could pick up who was in the know.
    Quite the little illustration of inner-city life, if it’s true. A life that I can’t help remarking is lionized in rap or hip-hop music and aped in popular culture generally. A neighborhood gun that gets used to kill a little girl who happens to be in the line of fire when one teenage boy fires at a few other teenage boys whom he suspects of bad intentions.
    I don’t know if the boy’s statement is trustworthy or not — I’ll get to that — but a friend testifi es to a similar case that she knows of, a neighborhood gun at the North Albany public housing complex, behind North Albany Academy. It was brought to her attention by young teenage girls, who told her about it without, however, divulging its exact location.
    Why the boy picked up the gun in the first place is unclear from the statement he signed. The statement says he was hanging out with a couple of friends, and one of them “asked me to go get a gun that I had hidden under the shed by the front door of 80 Ida Yarbrough,” which he did.
    Then he put the gun in a big front pocket in his pants, and three of them went riding around the streets on their bicycles. When they got to First Street, the statement says, “I saw three black kids standing up on the corner,” (the boy is black himself) and, “I thought that one of the kids on the corner was reaching for a gun so I pulled my gun from my pocket,” and shot.
    Just like that. Then he went back to Ida Yarbrough and put the gun back in the garbage can where he had gotten it.
    As for whether the boy’s statement is true, I note for the record that his mother was present during his interrogation but a lawyer was not, and I also note for the record that the Albany police did not audiotape or videotape the interrogation, which to me is inexcusable and ought to disqualify the thing for legal purposes.
    I cannot shake from my memory the case of the Central Park jogger, back in 1989, when five teenagers confessed to the brutal rape and beating of a young woman, without a lawyer to represent them, and later, when the boys (by then, men) had been in prison for up to 13 years, it turned out they hadn’t committed the crime at all. It had been committed by a lone predator who by that time was in prison for still other brutal crimes. New York City still faces multimillion-dollar lawsuits over that fiasco.
    We don’t know the details, but presumably those five were bullied, tricked and intimidated until they gave graphic confessions — confessions that held up in court.
    So when I hear that a teenage boy has confessed, but he did not have a lawyer present, and the police did not take the elementary trouble to tape-record the proceedings, I am inclined to reserve judgment. I gather from the official form on which the statement is typed that the police had him in custody for about three hours on Tuesday, from 11:55 a.m., when they allegedly informed him of his right to remain silent and to have a lawyer present, until 3 p.m., when his statement was completed.
    And when I say “allegedly” informed him of his rights, I am recalling the Bethlehem police advisory to Christopher Porco that was so deviously worded and so unctuously intoned that the police managed to keep a lawyer away from him while they grilled him even though a lawyer was out in the hallway trying to get in. That one was recorded.
    So I would like to hear this Albany advisory on a tape recording. I’m not impressed by a police offi - cer checking a box to the effect that someone was advised of his rights. Did they honestly and forthrightly tell him he did not have to answer their questions and they would get him a lawyer if he wanted one? I won’t take any bets on that one.
    Also, please note that I say “the statement the boy signed” rather than “the boy’s statement,” because there is no way the boy wrote the statement himself. Suspects never do.
    The investigating officers — in this case two Albany police detectives, Thomas Kubisch and Arthur Shade — interrogate the suspect and get out of him what they can, and then they type up a statement and get the suspect to sign it.
    Naturally they know how to word such a statement so it will be of most use in court, and they know how to shade it. Naturally, a suspect is scared and intimidated, whether he’s innocent or guilty, and by the end of the process he’s inclined to sign.
    An officer might tell him he will be free to go home if he signs; he might tell him it will help him in court; he might tell him anything he pleases. As long as no tape-recording is made, we have no way of knowing, and a court has no way of knowing. But a court accepts it anyway and allows it be put before a jury.
    That the police are still allowed to do business this way is to me a disgrace.
    Obviously I don’t know if the 15-year-old in this case, Jermayne Timmons, is innocent or guilty. Like everyone else who reads or hears about his statement and about the neighborhood gun I assume he’s guilty and that the shooting of the little girl has been solved, which is a relief.
    I have to kick myself to remember the Central Park jogger case, in which I also assumed the kids who confessed were guilty.
    I have to drill myself to acknowledge the boy did not write that statement himself; they are not his words; he did not have legal advice.
    I also note that the gun the kid supposedly returned to its hiding place was not found in that hiding place and has not yet been recovered.
    So I will keep an open mind and hope you will too.
Carl Strock can be reached
at 395-3085 or by e-mail at
carlstrock@dailygazette.com.

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EDITORIALS
Albany tragedy compounded by gun story

    As outrageous as the May 29 shooting death of 10-year-old Kathina Thomas was, it seems to have been made even more so by the story the alleged shooter told Albany police this week about how he came by the gun.
    The .45-caliber semiautomatic that Jermayne Timmons reportedly fired up First Street in the direction of rival gang members wasn’t his own; it was a community gun that, according to Timmons, “everyone” in the neighborhood knew about and used. It was supposedly kept in a garbage can outside the Ida Yarbrough Homes, and Timmons reportedly told police that after he fired the shot that accidentally hit Thomas — an innocent bystander — he and his pals pedaled their bikes back to the public housing project and put the gun back where they’d found it.
    If this is true, it is a shocking indictment — not just of the police department that didn’t know what “everyone” in the neighborhood supposedly knew, but of the law-abiding residents of the neighborhood who knew about the gun but didn’t do anything to move it out of harm’s way.
    Timmons is 15 years old, for heaven’s sake! When kids that young (and presumably younger) know about and have such easy access to a gun, is it any wonder that tragedies like this occur?
    The next question everyone — not just those in Albany’s inner city — needs to be asking: Are there are other community guns around? Police have to make a concerted effort to find out and flush them out, and law-abiding citizens have to help. Otherwise, this won’t be an isolated tragedy, but simply one of many.
    And the question after that: How is it that there are so many guns in these neighborhoods in the first place? The answer, of course, is that the nation’s gun laws are too lax. And until our leaders have the political will to stand up to the nation’s powerful pro-gun lobby and pass laws that really make it hard to buy and possess handguns, there’s little hope for improvement with the horrendous problem of gun violence.

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And the question after that: How is it that there are so many guns in these neighborhoods in the first place? The answer, of course, is that the nation’s gun laws are too lax. And until our leaders have the political will to stand up to the nation’s powerful pro-gun lobby and pass laws that really make it hard to buy and possess handguns, there’s little hope for improvement with the horrendous problem of gun violence.