20-year-old man fatally shot by police following domestic dispute

Aug 8, 2016

Kim Thomas, the mother of a 20-year-old young man shot and killed by police, is disputing the police account of the incident that left her son dead.

Although Harrisburg police claim to have shot Earl “Shaleek” Pinckney because he was holding a knife to his mother’s throat, Thomas says he didn’t have to be shot dead.

“No you didn’t tase my son. You shot him right in the heart,” Thomas said. “They need to know.”

According to Dauphin County District Attorney Edward Marco, police were responding to a report of a man threatening his mother with a knife when they arrived at the family’s home.

Thomas said the family had gotten into an argument and then called police.

“We had a little fight, argument like families have arguments,” Thomas said, also insisting that her son did not have a knife.

“They were arguing. They got a little rustling,” Thomas said. “I stopped it. I told everybody to get out of the house. I hold my son. I was talking to my son. I know how to control my son. He was calming down. Everything was getting fine.”

Thomas also says her son had bipolar disorder. He was father to a two-week old baby and recently wrote, “Being a dad is the only thing that makes me happy.”

Police reported that when they entered the bedroom, Pinckney did not drop the knife when ordered. The District Attorney says one of the four officers present fired a single shot that killed Pinckney, as his mother tussled to get away from him.

“I never saw the cop that hit my son,” Thomas said. “At the end of the day, I would like to look him in his face and ask him why did he shoot my son.”

The conflicting accounts of the story have caused great concern in the community. The officer who fired the shot had been on the force for 18 months.

“This is a tragedy for all involved,” Marsico said. “And a tragedy for the Pinckney family first and foremost.”

“We’ll look at the portion of the law that deals with protection of others, that is in this case, the threat was not to the officer himself but to somebody else,” Marsico said, “and whether the use of deadly force was justified to protect others in this circumstance, that will be the focus of the investigation.”