On April 10, 1990, Phillip C. Pannell, an African-American teenager, was shot and killed by Gary Spath, a white police officer in Teaneck, New Jersey.
The teenagers reported that a pair of them were having a 'play fight' when, in what they described as "routine harassment," a police car drove onto the basketball court where they had been playing and the officer asked if there was a problem.
[2] Around 6:15 on April 10, the Teaneck Police Department responded to a call from a resident complaining about a teenager wearing sweatpants and a red down coat pointing a silver-colored gun at another teen holding a rock.
Near Bryant Elementary School, Teaneck Police Officers Wayne Blanco and Gary Spath encountered a group of four or five teenagers who had left Tyron park and ordered them to line up against a brick wall.
The initial autopsy found that Pannell had been shot once in the back with his hands down, possibly corroborating the story of the two officers on the scene that he was reaching for the gun.
[4][3][2] On April 17, seven days after the shooting, New Jersey Attorney General Robert Del Tufo transferred the case to a state grand jury citing the "volatile and polarized" local atmosphere and the "sharp differences" between the testimonies of the police and other witnesses.
The same day, Attorney General Del Tufo declared that he would give the case to a second panel, saying that the first jury had been contaminated by "errors of major significance" in Dr. Denson's autopsy.
[4] The primary reasoning behind the convening of the second grand jury was faulty evidence that had tainted the first panel, especially revelations about mistakes made in the initial autopsy of Pannell.
Dr. Denson acknowledged his mistake and a review of the autopsy by other medical experts concluded that Pannell had at least had his shoulder or upper arm raised at the time he was shot.
[10] During the trial the jury heard the testimony of eyewitness who claimed to have witnessed Pannell's hands in various raised positions when he was shot, as well as expert testimony from the former Chief Medical Examiner of New York City, who concluded that Pannell's upper left arm (the side on which the police claimed to find the gun) had been raised at least above parallel to the ground based on the positioning of the bullet hole and the lack of certain tissue damage.
The tension culminated in February when Steven McDonald, an NYPD Officer paralyzed in a police shooting, was wheeled in to the courtroom without being stopped by the Sheriff's Deputies.
[12] The next day friends and supporters of Pannell called for Federal civil rights charges against Spath, though no evidence of racism had been introduced in the trial.
[4] The shooting and surrounding events inspired the 1995 book Color Lines: The Troubled Dreams of Racial Harmony in an American Town by Teaneck resident Mike Kelly.
When more police officers in riot gear responded, reportedly trampling some protesters, the rioters fled down Teaneck Road, smashing windows on at least 16 businesses and looting some of the stores.
Protest marches with many African Americans believing that Pannell had been killed in cold blood, while there were white residents insisting that Spath may have been justified in his actions.
The incident was an international news event that brought Reverend Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to the community, and calls for Federal Civil Rights prosecution.