Mother of teen who died in SC police shooting: ‘I still cry every day’

A dragonfly with a broken wing buzzed around Angie Hammond’s head Sunday as she prepared for the anniversary of the shooting death of her son, Zachary, who was killed by police.

It was green, 19-year-old Zachary’s favorite color.

“The dragonfly’s upper left wing was broken off,” Angie Hammond said. “Zach was shot in the left side. This dragonfly’s still flying around. I do get signs like this. It gives me hope, sometimes, that he’s OK. It’s us down here who are hurting.”

In the year since Zachary’s death, not much has changed – not state law, not how officers are trained, not policy at the Seneca Police Department, and not Angie Hammond’s pain.

“I still cry every day,” she said.

Unarmed Zachary Hammond was fatally shot when he drove his 2002 Honda Civic away from Seneca Police Lt. Mark Tiller during a botched police drug sting in a Hardee’s parking lot on July 26.

Seneca police arranged the sting when Hammond’s female passenger, the target of the operation, mistakenly sent a text message about drugs to a state trooper – she was wrong by one digit on the phone number. Small amounts of marijuana and cocaine were found in the car and on Hammond’s body, according to a state investigation.

Dash camera video of the shooting, which was withheld for three months from the public despite a lawsuit from the Independent Mail and other newspapers, shows Tiller’s cruiser racing into the parking lot and the officer jumping out, running up to Hammond’s car as the teen drove off, and firing into the driver’s side window.

Tiller was not charged with a crime and remains on paid leave from the Seneca Police Department, Chief John Covington said earlier this week.

Covington said department policies have not changed as a result of the shooting and that he is limited in what he can say because of a pending federal investigation.

In announcing the decision to not charge Tiller, 10th Judicial Circuit Solicitor Chrissy Adams said last year the officer had escalated the situation but his actions did not rise to the level of a crime.

The U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division investigation into the death of Hammond remains open, a spokesman for the department said Tuesday in an email. He declined to say what is being examined in the investigation and would not give a time frame for the investigation.

The city of Seneca reached a $2.15 million settlement with the Hammonds in March, a settlement that allowed Tiller to avoid a video deposition in the case. The settlement admits no fault and covers the city, the Police Department, Tiller and Covington.

The shooting has led to several bills in the Legislature, including one that would allow a judge to rule within 15 days on whether video can be kept private with the presumption being the video footage is public.

That bill was not approved this year, and attorneys for the Hammonds said the family will be pushing for that bill and others to become law next year.

One of those other bills is being drafted by state Sen. Todd Rutherford, a Columbia Democrat and House minority leader. The bill would bar officers from shooting into vehicles.

He said there would be leeway in special circumstances – such as the incident in Nice, France, in which the attacker used a truck to kill 84 people.

Rutherford pointed to Hammond’s shooting as a case where law enforcement could have caught up with their target almost immediately.

“We need to stop the situations where an officer finds his way into danger and then has to shoot his way out,” Rutherford said.

He said police agencies adopting policies about shooting would be preferable to a law but he hasn’t seen many departments in South Carolin doing that, which he said is common in large departments elsewhere and has not led to more people eluding or endangering police.

Maj. Florence McCants, spokeswoman for the South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy, said the law would need to have clear exemptions for scenarios officers encounter.

“To say that at no time can an officer shoot into a car? That won’t work,” she said.

The academy plans to use the dash camera footage of the Hammond shooting to future recruits, McCants said.

It has not entered the curriculum yet because of the outstanding federal investigation but it will be added when that is finished, she said.

“We will discuss the tactics of it, the placement of the vehicle and the placement of the officer and we will not be judging but letting them decide when you stand here, this is what happens,” McCants said. “We will discuss when and where the use of force is allowed and the way they’d handle it.”

Angie Hammond is following the impact her son’s death may, or may not have on the state.

“As far as I’m concerned nothing’s changed yet,” she said. “I say yet, strongly.”

And a year later, the outrage burns bright.

“He was killed unnecessarily by an out of control police officer,” she said. “I’m still very angry.”

She hopes that the federal investigation can lead to more consequences for Tiller and the Police Department.

“Until then, we muddle through the best we can,” she said. “Tomorrow’s another day.”

This story was originally published July 28, 2016 at 8:57 PM.