Jaqueline Rash is demanding answers after her 15-year-old son, Cornelius “CJ” McGee, was shot to death by a former Clarksdale, Mississippi, police officer after visiting the cop’s daughter.
Cornelius was killed near the 1200 block of West Second Street at 4:30 p.m. on May 22 in Clarksdale after he ran out of the home of former Clarksdale Police officer Andrew Bankhead, according to WREG. Cornelius was reportedly dating Bankhead’s daughter and fled when the former cop returned home and became angry upon seeing him.
Rash told Action 5 News that she’d received almost no information from the police and was told by eyewitnesses what happened to her son.
“I hear four shots when I just made it in from work, thinking he was here at the house,” recalled Rash.
Rash went on to say that she had begun to go toward the scene when she received a text from one of CJ’s friends who lived next door to Bankhead, telling her that her son was lying in the backyard dead. When she arrived, the police wouldn’t let her see her son.
“I’m telling him that the little boy who lived there just called me and told me that my baby was in the backyard, dead, and they still wouldn’t let me go back there and see him. They wouldn’t tell me that it was him. They wouldn’t tell me nothing. They were like, ‘We can’t tell you nothin’ right now.’ “
Rash said that the neighbor told her that Bankhead shot her son twice after he fled the home.
“Now, the little boy that stay at the house, he said the man — my baby over there with a little girl — the man chased him, he said a man shot my son in his leg as he was going over the fence and then shot my son again, in his back. Why did my baby get shot in the back if he was already out your yard? He wasn’t no threat. Why shoot him?”
No arrests have been made, and Bankhead’s first cousin Julius Voss told WREG News that Bankhead claimed CJ broke into his house and he shot him in self-defense. “He had been involved in a shooting,” she said. “That someone had broke into his house, and he defended his self.”
The day following CJ’s slaying, Rash said that the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation was supposed to be at her home at noon to provide her with answers, but as of 2 p.m., no one had arrived. “We were supposed to have somebody from MBI come at noon,” she noted. “But it’s 2 and we haven’t heard from them still.”
Rash said that she was told her son was dating Bankhead’s daughter, and she’d let him inside the house. She believes that her son was murdered for dating Bankhead’s daughter.
“The daughter, they said he was there with the daughter. She let him in the house, so they said it was a burglary, but it wasn’t a break-in,” said Rash. “The daughter let him in the house.”
The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation has reportedly taken over the investigation, but Bankhead has yet to be charged with a crime.
“My son weighs all of 116 pounds,” CJ’s mom said. “He wasn’t a threat to nobody. We just want answers, and we want justice.”
