Witness to death of Lionel Womack, former KCK cop shot by police: ‘He wasn’t aggressive’
A witness to the death of former Kansas City, Kansas police officer Lionel Womack, who was fatally shot by a KCK officer on Nov. 22, says that what she saw is just not what authorities say happened.
“They didn’t handle it properly,” said the witness, who is too fearful of retribution to let me print her name. “Y’all know you didn’t have to use deadly force. He wasn’t aggressive or anything.”
The witness, who is a certified nurse’s assistant, was particularly appalled by the half measures she says they took in trying to revive Womack, a beloved former officer who had already been run over by a Kiowa County sheriff’s deputy last year: “Only one person was doing CPR — it’s supposed to be two — and barely giving any chest compression. No ambulance ever arrived,” while she was there.
Could be, of course, that it’s her account that’s wrong. She has footage, but not of the actual shooting. When she heard the shots, “I was looking around for my phone at the bottom of my purse.” Which means she didn’t see everything, either.
But what the witness did see still raises a bunch of questions.
Womack’s widow, Z’lontae Womack, herself an officer with the KCKPD, said she has seen the police footage from the body cam and dashcam of the officer who shot her husband. And she said she came away from that viewing with the same impression as the witness, which is that officers went in too aggressively.
Right after the shooting, Chief Karl Oakman said officers were responding to two 911 calls “about a man standing in the road pointing at the sky and trying to jump in front of traffic.”
Womack’s widow saw video, still has questions
Zee Womack, as she’s known, said that after seeing the footage, “I asked if I could see it again, because I had a couple of questions. I have some questions about the way the situation was handled.”
Oakman has said, “those officers had no choice” other than to shoot after Womack grabbed the gun from one officer and then pointed it at first one and then the other. “This whole incident took place in 26 seconds.”
I asked Mrs. Womack if the footage clearly shows her husband grabbing a gun, and she said she wasn’t sure. “That would be one of the questions I have.”
“I can’t really go into details because I am still employed there — I don’t know for how long.” In 2019, she filed a discrimination suit against the department, alleging rampant sexism and racism.
But to the witness’s point that it looked to her like officers went in too aggressively, Mrs. Womack said, “I agree.”
On the question of CPR, she said, “I didn’t see that part. But it’s funny you called, because I’ve been laying here for the last two days wondering whether they called EMS, and how long it took them” if they did.
She’s been told that she might need to go through the attorney general to see the video again, though it’s surely her right to review it.
The public should see it, too. And sooner rather than later.
Oakman has said he’d like to release it, and might do that when the investigation is complete.
Now would be better, though a police spokeswoman said that under Kansas law, the department can’t release evidence in an ongoing criminal investigation.
And speaking of that investigation, why, when Wyandotte County District Attorney Mark Dupree promised an independent investigation into all KCKPD shootings, is his office instead participating in an investigation of this shooting that’s being conducted along with the police department and the sheriff’s department? What kind of independence is that?
Ex-police detective was run over by sheriff’s deputy
Right now, Womack’s many friends are not especially happy with the few answers they have gotten from the KCKPD, where he worked from ‘07 until last year. He was promoted to detective in 2018, and in August of 2020 was fired for what Oakman has called “numerous policy violations” and “ conduct issues.”
Also in August of last year, Womack was run over by Kiowa County Sheriff’s Deputy Jeremy Rodriguez after he ran from a traffic stop. The footage of that incident is harrowing, because it does look intentional. He had been pulled over, the sheriff’s department said, because his car looked like one that had been seen speeding. Womack told friends that he ran not because he’d done anything wrong, but because he was afraid deputies were going to hurt him. He later filed an excessive force lawsuit against Rodriguez.
What the witness to Womack’s final, fatal encounter with police told me she saw was a tall Black man whose car seemed to have broken down. His hazard lights were on, and he was standing a couple of feet in front of his black Jeep and looking up at the sky, with an expression that she read as asking, “Dear Lord, what next?”
She said it seemed to her that the officers “were already irritated” going into the situation. “They started talking to him, and it was forceful. He had his hands up.”
She first took her concerns to new Mayor Tyrone Garner, who according to her told her to report what she’d seen to the KCKPD. Garner said through an assistant that he had no comment on that.
But the witness said she did not even consider taking Garner’s advice. “I’m like, ‘No, they murdered him and are they going to come after me next?’ It’s happened way too much and police aren’t held accountable.”
(In part, said the woman, to whom I’d never spoken before she got in touch with me about the Womack shooting, that’s because a family member of hers had a scary experience with the much-accused former KCKPD detective Roger Golubski. Which is yet another situation that shows how important it is that he be brought to justice; until then, how many others wouldn’t think of telling police what they know?)
Celisha Towers, who ran for sheriff in Wyandotte County this year, said that as someone who had known 36-year-old Womack since high school, “I don’t believe the story” being peddled by the police. “And he wasn’t crazy, let me say that. When you start speaking up against them, they’ll say you’re delusional. That’s what they did to Lionel. They’ll start building a crazy case on you.”
Feared former police colleagues were out to get him
Womack was funny, smart, kind to everybody, a great athlete and “the most successful of all of our friends,” said Clilton Carruthers, who was a groomsman in his wedding.
In recent years, this “super alpha male,” had started saying that he was being watched. He felt that some of his fellow colleagues in the KCKPD were out to get him.
But was that paranoid, accurate, or both?
“There was a real fear, a real concern,” said his friend John Johnson. But grabbing an officer’s gun is suicidal, he said. As Womack knew all too well, since early in his career, he had his gun taken away, and in self-defense, had to shoot the man, who died. “I’ve never known Lionel to be suicidal or confrontational. That’s so hard to believe I’d have to see it.”
Johnson asks why officers responding to what had to have sounded like a call involving a person in crisis wouldn’t have had their tasers at the ready.
“I thought some of his fears were well-founded,” Carruthers told me. “He’d say, ‘I promise you I’m not dirty, but there are some who are’ ’’ — some former colleagues who no longer looked kindly on him. “That was weird, because his whole family is in the police department. But the way he explained it, it seemed like it was possible.”
Carruthers asks why, when officers sent to the scene saw that it was Lionel Womack standing out in the street, they wouldn’t have called his mom or wife, who both work for the KCKPD. “It doesn’t make any sense” that they instead chose to blunder in themselves.
“I just want to see the footage,” he said. And if it shows what police say it does, we will see it.
This story was originally published December 29, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
