Racquel Barrett choked back tears Sunday as she heard again how her 28-year-old son died.
Maurice Gordon was allegedly shot at least four times by a white New Jersey State Police trooper after what should have been a routine traffic stop on the Garden State Parkway on May 23.
A family lawyer alleges that as Gordon lay bleeding on the pavement, troopers handcuffed him before trying to get help for him.
Two weeks later, authorities have still not released the name of the trooper involved in the fatal arrest.
Barrett told the Daily News she cannot get over the emptiness of losing her son and never being able to say goodbye.
“As a mum, it’s so painful reliving the moment over and over and over again,” Barrett said. “I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.”
Barrett believes her son was killed because he is black, just like George Floyd, who died at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer two days after Gordon.
“He’s a black man and George Floyd was a black man. And they were both killed by police officers here in America,” said Barrett, 42, who is of Jamaican descent and lives in London’s Notting Hill neighborhood. “So to me, it’s the same thing and part of the same situation that we are facing as black people.”
Gov. Phil Murphy, who has been outspoken about the police killing of Floyd, has refused to comment on Gordon’s killing, saying only that New Jersey “mourns his loss.”
New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal has refused to offer any explanation for the shooting.
But an official document released by his office claimed that Gordon tried to grab the unnamed trooper’s gun and tried to steal his state police vehicle, the Daily News has learned.
“Attempted to take handgun. Attempted to take troop car,” reads the document known as a 3B form that must be filed after any police-involved shooting in New Jersey. It was obtained exclusively by the Daily News on Sunday.
The document is supposed to include the name of the police officer or state trooper involved, but that information was mysteriously omitted in the Gordon case.
“They are playing games,” said Rich Rivera, a lawyer who filed a request for the 3B related to Gordon’s killing. “They are not being transparent.”
Family lawyer William O. Wagstaf said he has seen portions of the video depicting the confrontation and there is “absolutely no evidence” that Gordon tried to take the trooper’s weapon.
On Monday morning, he denounced the claims as part of a police cover up.
On Sunday night, Grewal said his “team of independent investigators” had completed an “initial investigation” and that “we are in a position to publicly release the audio and video recordings of the incident.”
Wagstaff said the Gordon family had not yet seen the entire video Sunday night and slammed the official silence around the police killing.
“For all we know, this trooper may still be moving around the state of New Jersey armed with a firearm,” Wagstaff said.
He called it a disgrace that a video of Gordon’s takedown taken two days before Floyd’s caught-on-camera death wasn’t released sooner, saying “it seems like they are trying to cover something up.”
It’s unclear if the trooper who pulled Gordon over may have suspected he was involved in some other criminal activity. An unconfirmed published report on a New Jersey news site claimed Gordon had been stopped three times in the hours before his death.
Gordon was pulled over for speeding on the Garden State Parkway in Bass River Township around 6:30 a.m., police said in a cursory five-paragraph press release. Wagstaff says a trooper said Gordon was clocked going 110 miles per hour.
After the traffic stop, the unidentified trooper ordered Gordon to move his car, but it wouldn’t start. So Gordon asked the trooper if he could wait in the squad car until a tow truck arrived.
According to Wagstaff, Gordon waited for about 45 minutes and then decided to leave the police cruiser. That’s when the unidentified officer physically confronted him.
The trooper pulled out his service weapon and shot Gordon at least four times, Wagstaff said. Authorities refuse to say how many shots the trooper fired or how many bullets struck Gordon.
The family lawyer was permitted to see edited portions of the video captured by the state police car’s dashboard camera. He says there is no obvious provocation for the confrontation, or the shooting.
After the shooting, the video shows two troopers handcuffing Gordon before seeking medical help, according to the lawyer. Wagstaff was not permitted to see the rest of the video, leading him to question if Gordon was given prompt medical attention as he lay dying in a pool of his own blood.
It was unclear how many troopers were at the scene.
“Even after shooting him multiple times, we don’t even know if they even tried to help him,” Wagstaff said. “Or at, least said, you know, “Come on, you can make it.”
Police won’t say whether Gordon died at the scene or later, adding to his family’s anguish.
Gordon, who was born in Jamaica, was attending college in Poughkeepsie, and delivering food for Uber Eats.
“He was a good boy, working and doing his own thing,” Barrett said.
Barrett arrived in Poughkeepsie last week to sort out the arrangements for her son’s burial. She plans to have him cremated and the ashes eventually returned to Jamaica.
Watching the protests around the nation over Floyd’s death after a cop kneeled on his neck for nearly nine minutes has been a crushing reminder of her own son’s death. But Barrett insists she will also take to the streets if that’s what she has to do to win justice.
“It’s brought it straight back home to me,” Barrett said. “The police who are supposed to serve and protect us are the ones who are killing us.”
