‘My everything’: Cameron Lamb’s mother speaks after charges filed against KCPD officer
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Police shooting of Cameron Lamb
Eric DeValkenaere fatally shot Cameron Lamb, 26, on Dec. 3, 2019. The police detective was charged with involuntary manslaughter and armed criminal action. He was the first white Kansas City police officer in 80 years to face a criminal trial in the shooting death of a Black man. A bench trial began Nov. 8, 2021, before Jackson County Judge J. Dale Youngs, who will deliver his verdict on Nov. 19.
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As prosecutors announced charges against a Kansas City police officer in the fatal shooting of Cameron Lamb in 2019, his mother lamented that his three children would have to grow up without him.
“I truly hate that they will not have the opportunity to grow up with their dad in their lives,” Laurie Bey said Thursday at a press conference.
Just before Bey spoke, Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker said that Eric J. DeValkenaere had been charged with first-degree involuntary manslaughter.
Lamb was shot as he was backing into his garage in December.
According to police, the shooting happened after an officer went to investigate a disturbance between two vehicles on the road. A police helicopter tracked one of the vehicles as it pulled behind a home on College Avenue,
Detectives approached a man in the vehicle and “the officer was put in a position where he had to discharge his firearm,” a spokesman for the Kansas City Police Department said.
Police investigating the shooting found Lamb inside the vehicle with his left arm and head hanging out of the driver’s side window. On the ground near his left hand was a handgun, police said.
Lamb’s family has said they struggled to believe the police department’s version of events. His father, Bobby Lamb, said his son was not the type of man to act the way police alleged he had.
At the news conference Bey said Lamb was her youngest child, her only son and her “everything.”
“He was not the precious lamb of God but he was the precious lamb that God blessed me with,” she said. “I thank God for allowing me to be his mother if only for a little while.”
She said her son was a loving father not only to his own children but to other children. He was a mechanic, she said, who would stop what he was doing to help out someone on the side of the road.
“To know him was to love him,” she said.
Lamb was a die-hard Chiefs fan, Bey said. The week before he died he watched the team beat the Las Vegas Raiders in a regular season game.
“He did get to enjoy things that he loved in life prior to what happened to him,” Bey said.
Lamb’s family was among the relatives of Black Americans killed by police who met privately with President Donald Trump this week before the president signed an executive order that he said would encourage better police practices.
At a vigil held in the weeks after Lamb’s death, family members spoke about frayed relations between police and African Americans nationwide. They said they hope that Lamb’s death can lead to progress in those relations and a reduction in violence.
This story was originally published June 18, 2020 at 8:20 PM.
