Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies shot and killed the half-brother of Robert Fuller, a Black man found hanged in a tree in a Southern California town earlier this month, after a traffic stop in the city of Rosamond on the afternoon of Wednesday, June 17. The sheriff’s office and the family’s attorney have identified him as 31-year old Terron Jammal Boone.
Detectives believed they had positively identified Boone as a male matching the description of a kidnap and sexual assault suspect and initiated a traffic stop. Deputy James Nagao said in a statement that deputies fired at Boone multiple times after he opened fire on the officers with a handgun. Boone was “struck several times in the torso” and pronounced dead at the scene, according to Nagao.
Deputies’ gunfire also struck the unidentified female driver of the vehicle, who was not being sought in connection with the warrant. She was treated for injuries at the local hospital and later released. A 7-year-old child present in the vehicle at the time of the shooting was left unharmed.
According to a statement released by the sheriff’s department, officers planned to arrest Boone, who was sitting in the passenger seat of a blue SUV, as the vehicle came to a stop in an apartment complex parking lot. The district attorney’s office had filed 12 charges against Boone, and officers intended to carry out an active warrant for his arrest.
The Los Angeles Times has reported that there is no video footage of the incident because neither the officers nor the police vehicles were equipped with cameras. However, officials are working to acquire access to surrounding security cameras and home Ring devices that may have captured the incident to further the investigation. One home camera captured the audio of the shots being fired.
Jamon Hicks, the family’s attorney, shared that he informed Boone’s sisters, who are also the sisters of the late Robert Fuller, that they had lost a second brother in a span of just two weeks. “This afternoon I had to notify the sisters of Robert Fuller that their half brother Terron Jammal Boone was killed by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies in Kern County,” he said.
On June 10, Robert Fuller’s body was found hanged from a tree limb across from City Hall in Palmdale, California, which is about 20 miles from Rosamond. Investigators initially ruled the death a suicide before partially retracting the ruling days later after lynching accusations mounted across the country. A total of six Black And Hispanic people have been found hanged in trees around the country in recent weeks, including Malcolm Harsch, whose body was also recovered hanging from a tree limb in the Los Angeles area on May 31.
Hicks also stated that the family and legal team have no further comments about the officer-involved shooting at this time and plan to wait tp receive more information about the incident before releasing another statement.
Amid the growing call for police accountability, as well as increased awareness about police interactions with Black people, law enforcement agencies across the country are facing major scrutiny.
The sheriff’s department announced that several independent investigations are launched at the scene whenever an officer-involved shooting takes place in Los Angeles County. The incident will be reviewed by the Critical Incident Review Panel and by the Sheriff’s Executive Force Review Committee.
