Family will ask feds to investigate fatal police shooting of Suwanee man

By Rhonda Cook and Alexis Stevens

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The family of a Suwanee man killed by a New Jersey detective is angered by prosecutors' explanation of what happened in that Newark park last Friday and plans to ask for a federal investigation into the fatal shooting.

The family and friends of DeFarra "Dean" Ivan Gaymon are seeing their "grief and concern" turn into "intense and growing anger and outrage."

"The statement is a blatant lie concocted after four days of unexplained silence,"  Gaymon's family said in a written statement after Essex County prosecutors released to the media some of their findings based on an interview Monday with the undercover officer who shot the 48-year-old Gaymon in the abdomen around 6 p.m. Friday, three hours before he died at University Hospital.

Gaymon, who is married and has four children, had flown to Newark for the weekend for his 30th high school reunion, an event he had planned for the Montclair High School class of 1980.

"Essex County has wrongfully taken Dean Gaymon’s life and with him not being here to present his side of the story, they are now attempting to defame him in death and to kill his name and reputation in addition to his body. Our family will not stand by and allow this to occur," his family said in a statement.

They said they would ask the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office in Newark to  immediately take over "the investigation of Dean’s murder."

The events that ended in the fatal shooting -- the fifth police-involved shooting  in Essex County in a month -- began when an undercover investigator from the Essex County Sheriff's Office was dispatched to Branch Brook Park to check on a report of people performing sex acts in the huge urban greenspace.

Prosecutor Robert D. Laurino said the officer, who is not identified because he works under cover, had been involved in an arrest moments before encountering Gaymon, president and chief executive officer of the Credit Union of Atlanta. The officer had returned to the spot where the first arrest was made to retrieve handcuffs he had drooped.

The officer, now on medical leave following the incident, told prosecutors Daymon was engaging in a public sex act just before the officer approached him.

"The officer pulled out his badge, and Gaymon appeared panicked, assaulted the officer and fled," Laurino said.

Laurino said Gaymon ignored several commands from the officer, his gun drawn, to "stop and submit."  Instead, Gaymon repeatedly threatened the officer, Laurino said.

“He was threatening to kill the officer if the officer should approach him,” Laurino said.

Gaymon lunged at the officer, who had his gun drawn, according to the prosecutor. The investigator fired one shot, "out of fear for his life," Laurino said.

"Dean Gaymon was a nonviolent, nonaggressive and nonthreatening person his entire life," according to the family's statement. "It was his very nature to avoid confrontation. ... It would have been completely and totally against his nature to ‘tussle' with a police officer, to resist authority, to assault a police officer (or anyone else for that matter) or to attempt to disarm an armed police officer. Words such as ‘I am going to kill you' would not be uttered from him."

The case will be presented to a grand jury, which is the practice of Essex County prosecutors in officer-involved shootings. But the 29-year-old investigator, who has been on the force eight years, is not expected to face charges.

“This one will be presented just like all the others. Typically, we leave that decision to the grand jury,” Katherine Carter, spokeswoman for the Essex County prosecutor, told the AJC on on Tuesday.

That characterization further angered Gaymon's family.

"The Essex County district attorney interviewed the police officer Monday evening, the fourth day after Dean’s shooting," they said in a statement. " It is incomprehensible that a responsible prosecutor would delay this long in interviewing an uninjured police officer that fatally shot an unarmed man. Since when does a police officer get to take a long weekend before being questioned about a highly suspicious shooting, such as this one, which led to a death.

"The statement given by the police officer is illogical, inconsistent, nonsensical, twisted, jumbled, bizarre and, on its face, obviously false. We are absolutely convinced that the officer’s statement is a contemptible lie, and the Essex County prosecutor should be ashamed of presenting this statement to the public prior to the completion of a thorough investigation."

Gaymon is the sixth person to die in an officer-involved shooting in Essex County this year. There have been nine police-related shootings in Essex County so far this year, including the six that were fatal.

"While we do not know the details regarding the other shootings, in this case, we know that the police killed an innocent man, with no history of or disposition towards violence,” the Gaymon family said in their statement.