It was 11 p.m. on a Friday night when Georgia cops entered a home without a warrant and shot a Black man named Marando Salmon to death.
Investigators initially claimed Salmon was killed after he refused multiple commands and reached for a gun, but that turned out to be a lie. Then they said he was killed after he threw “an object” at them, but investigators did not specify what that object was.
It was not until more than a year later — after a grand jury indicted the two DeKalb County police officers — that the public learned the object was a phone.
But even then, police still insisted they thought it was a knife.
Last week, Salmon’s family filed a lawsuit against DeKalb County and the two former police officers, Russel Mathis and Jordan M. Vance, accusing them of violating his Constitutional rights by entering his home without a warrant.
Defendant Mathis violated Mr. Salmon’s rights under the Fourth Amendment when he unlawfully trespassed in Salmon’s home with force of arms, assaulted him, and shot him. No reasonable officer could have believed that Mathis’s use of deadly force against the unarmed Salmon was constitutional.
Defendant Vance conspired in, participated in, and contributed to the constitutional violations committed by Mathis.
“This tragedy goes beyond a simple mistake or misunderstanding,” attorney Michael Neff said in a statement to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“It represents an unacceptable choice by DeKalb County to follow its policies and procedures rather than properly limit when the police can enter a home without a warrant.”
The Shooting
The incident took place on Nov. 4, 2022, after DeKalb County police received a call about a stolen car parked in a residential driveway. The car had been stolen from a dealer weeks earlier after it was taken for a test drive and never returned.
Mathis and Vance pulled up to the home and spotted the car in the driveway. They then walked up to the front door and knocked, but there was no answer.
However, the door was unlocked, so the officers walked into the home — despite not having a warrant — because they believed a departmental policy allowed them to do so.
The claim states they searched the first floor of the house and found nobody before making their way upstairs to Salmon’s bedroom.
Salmon, 36, was asleep but sat up in his bed upon hearing the bedroom door open. Within seconds, Mathis fired six rounds, four of them striking Salmon, killing him.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation took over the investigation and issued the following statement on Nov. 5, 2022, the day after the shooting.
Preliminary information indicates that at approximately 11 p.m., uniformed officers responded to a report of a stolen vehicle parked in a driveway at 998 Autumn Crest Court, Stone Mountain, Georgia. As the officers were conducting their investigation, they encountered a man inside the home. The officers identified themselves and issued commands. The man did not comply, reached for a nearby handgun and was shot by the officers. He was taken to Grady Memorial Hospital where he later died.
The GBI then issued the following statement on December 6, 2022, acknowledging Salmon never reached for a gun.
The initial GBI statement indicated that Salmon reached for a nearby handgun before he was shot by officers. Further investigation has determined that an officer opened a bedroom door, and Salmon threw an object at the officer. Although the officer did not see Salmon touch a firearm, he was reaching for a nearby item. Later, agents recovered a handgun from the room he was in.
The gun mentioned in the followup statement was legally owned and holstered and nowhere near him, DeKalb County District Attorney Sherry Boston announced in press conference about the indictments.
The Indictments
The two cops initially tried to claim they had the right to enter Salmon’s home without a warrant under a departmental policy that states “warrantless searches are permitted . . . where speed is essential to the accomplishment of lawful police action.”
But the lawsuit states that the policy is unconstitutional:
This policy affirmatively authorizes warrantless searches that violate the Constitution, specifically, those searches where the officer is engaged in lawful police activity and deems speed essential, but has time to get a warrant.
The claim also points out that speed was not essential in this matter because the car had been stolen weeks earlier. And it is still not clear whether Salmon had stolen the car.
Salmon’s sister, Colleen Fearon, told WXIA-TV in December 2022 that her brother said he had rented the car because his truck was in the shop.
Mathis ended up resigning in May 2023 while under investigation, and Vance was fired after the grand jury indicted both cops on Feb. 28, 2024.
Mathis was indicted on charges of involuntary manslaughter, a felony, and reckless conduct, a misdemeanor. Vance was charged with reckless conduct.
“As they cleared the house, Officer Mathis opened the door of a second-floor bedroom and encountered Salmon sitting on his bed in the dark room,” according to the press release from the DeKalb County District Attorney’s office.
“In a matter of seconds, Officer Mathis opened fire, shooting and killing Salmon. Salmon had thrown a cellphone at Officer Mathis, which Mathis believed was a knife.”
The DeKalb County Police Department has a history of shooting Black men inside their homes, as they did to Kevin Davis in December 2014 and Matthew Zadok Williams in 2021.
