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Man Shot In Back, Autopsy Shows
By Tom Jackman and Jamie Stockwell
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday , September 7, 2000 ; A01
Justice Department officials said yesterday that they are moving toward a broad civil rights investigation of the
Prince George's County police department, as a private autopsy showed that a man killed Friday by a county
detective who trailed him to Virginia was shot five times in the back.
Also yesterday, the FBI confirmed that it has opened a criminal investigation into the fatal shooting of Prince C.
Jones, 25, by Cpl. Carlton B. Jones. That brings to more than a dozen the number of individual FBI criminal
investigations opened into incidents involving Prince George's officers since April 1999.
The autopsy of Prince Jones was performed Tuesday by a forensic pathologist hired by the victim's family. The
findings were disclosed by the family's lawyers, Ted J. Williams and Gregory Lattimer. Lattimer said the
Hyattsville man was hit five times in the torso and once in the forearm, all from behind. He said Jones died of
internal bleeding.
Fairfax County Commonwealth's Attorney Robert F. Horan Jr. did not return a call seeking a comment on the
results of the private autopsy. On Tuesday, he declined to provide information from the state's autopsy.
Prince George's and Fairfax authorities have released little information about the shooting. Prince George's
Police Chief John S. Farrell was out of the office and did not return telephone calls to him. He said on Tuesday
that Carlton Jones, 32, who has not been charged, had followed the Jeep that Prince Jones was driving after
receiving a tip that it might be connected to a stolen police weapon.
Another Prince George's man who has a pending civil suit against Carlton Jones said yesterday that when he
was stopped by the officer in 1997, he was accused of having thrown a stolen handgun onto the roof of a
Landover home. According to the lawsuit brought by John R. Johnson, the charges were later dismissed, and
the officer was found to have provided a false statement.
Farrell said Carlton Jones has told authorities that he fired at Prince Jones because he was in fear for his life
after Prince Jones used his Jeep to back into the driver's side of the officer's unmarked silver Mitsubishi
Montero.
Carlton Jones is on leave with pay and could not be contacted yesterday.
Authorities said the likelihood that the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division will conduct a broad
investigation of Prince George's County police operations has increased, in part, because of the growing
number of shootings--12 in the past 13 months, including five fatalities--by county officers.
Bill Yeomans, deputy chief of the Civil Rights Division, said the shootings have "cause concerns for the
community," one of the factors that the department considers in its investigations.
Yeomans said the department is "pretty far along" in its current investigation of allegations of misconduct and
brutality by members of the canine unit. He said department officials have been meeting with residents and
gathering information about the various police shootings, as well as other police conduct issues, and will decide
soon about expanding its probe.
If a police agency is found to have engaged in a pattern or practice of violating the federal rights of citizens, it
can be instructed to reform itself, he said.
"The Prince George's police department will cooperate fully with the FBI's investigation and any federal
investigation," Royce Holloway, a police spokesman, said late yesterday.
Edythe Fleming Hall, head of the county NAACP and a member of a county task force reviewing police
behavior, said last night, "I hope are earnestly going to conduct a very
thorough investigation and do it in a timely manner and report quickly to us so the citizens can learn what is
going on."
The latest FBI criminal investigation will be conducted by the Washington field office; most of the others are
being handled by the Maryland office. Susan Lloyd, an FBI spokeswoman, said the agency will attempt to
determine whether Carlton Jones "used excessive force under color of the law," a criminal violation.
Lloyd said that the FBI investigation will be separate from those of the two counties involved, and that agents
will try to interview the same witnesses. She said the agency cannot force Carlton Jones to give a statement,
other than to have federal prosecutors issue a subpoena if the case goes before a grand jury.
"At this point, it's impossible to say whether the interview will take place," Lloyd said.
The shooting occurred after Carlton Jones and a supervisor, driving separate cars, began following Prince
Jones's black Jeep in the Chillum Park area of Hyattsville, Prince George's police said.
Farrell said that the investigators were unsure who was driving the Jeep or where it was heading, and that the
police mission was intended to be surveillance only. The Prince George's officers did not notify Washington or
Fairfax police that they were in the area because they said they had not planned to take action.
But when Prince Jones reached Beechwood Lane, where his fiancee lives, he apparently pulled onto a side
street and parked in a driveway. The detective told a police union official, John A. "Rodney" Bartlett, that Prince
Jones rammed his unmarked police vehicle twice.
There were differing accounts as to whether the officer and Prince Jones got out of their vehicles and exactly
how the shooting occurred.
Prince George's police policy specifically prohibits shooting at a vehicle when the vehicle is the only weapon
being used against an officer. However, Farrell said, "if you're being rammed by a vehicle that's thousands of
pounds, that can be deadly force."
Williams, a longtime friend of Prince Jones's mother, said: "It's sad that he would use the amount of the
poundage of the vehicle. . . . The collision itself does not justify killing a man."
After he was shot, Prince Jones drove about three blocks toward his fiancee's house, but crashed into a parked
car. He died a short time later at Inova Fairfax Hospital.
Wanting to have an independent autopsy before Prince Jones's burial this weekend, Lattimer and Williams
hired Jack Daniels, of Charlottesville, a former forensic pathologist with the state medical examiner's office in
Richmond.
Daniels could not be reached for comment yesterday, but Lattimer said that Daniels had seen preliminary
results from the state autopsy and that "we have no quarrel with what the medical examiner's office has done.
They handled it properly."
Lattimer said five shots struck Prince Jones in the torso, one of which punctured a lung, while another bullet
smashed through his liver.
He said further tests will be done to determine whether all the shots were fired as Jones sat behind the wheel of
his Jeep Cherokee and whether the shots were at close range or while Jones was outside the Jeep.
Microscopic inspection of the wounds may provide those answers, Lattimer said.
Prince Jones's friends wonder whether police might have followed the wrong car, saying that he deplored
violence.
© 2000 The Washington Post Company
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