Unarmed man killed by cops in AL.

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Josh Moon: MPD has lots of explaining to do in shooting death

Josh Moon, Montgomery Advertiser1 day agoFacebookTwitterGoogle Plusmore

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Albert Cesare / Advertiser

Kimberly Gunn, sister of Greg Gunn, grieves where her brother was shot in a more

There was another one.

Another town. Another unarmed black man. Another seemingly innocuous encounter with police. Another odd explanation of how it all turned deadly.

The difference is that this one is here — in Montgomery. In one of the oldest neighborhoods in the city, Mobile Heights.

Down McElvy  Street, a few hundred yards away from Carver Elementary School, 58-year-old Gregg Gunn was shot dead by a Montgomery Police officer after … something happened.

Exactly what that something was that led to Gunn’s death is unclear.

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THE MONTGOMERY ADVERTISER

Shock, sadness fill neighborhood after man killed by police

Walking around the Mobile Heights neighborhood, talking to neighbors and witnesses and getting a feel for the people, the neighborhood and the climate, it’s fairly obvious that Gunn wasn’t anyone’s first choice to wind up on the bad end of a cop encounter.

Sure, Gunn “was no angel,” as his brother, Kenny, put it, but there’s a big gap between angel and threatening the life of a police officer.

Gunn was arrested a dozen years ago for stealing a refrigerator and hand trucks. He had charges for bad checks the year before that. And he had outstanding traffic tickets. But there was no violence, no altercations with police, no signs of a dangerous man.

“He was scared to death of police,” Kenny said. “He might run from them, but he wouldn’t attack one. No way.”

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THE MONTGOMERY ADVERTISER

Perspective: Police, Greg Gunn and the search for facts

Family and neighbors said Gunn was the guy everyone in the neighborhood knew on a first-name basis, who cut the grass for at least four neighbors, who walked the neighborhood often as he went back and forth to and from his girlfriend’s house. Gunn's father was one of the original black officers on the MPD force and raised his children to respect cops.

They’re at a loss for how he wound up dead, killed by a cop.

From the collection of at least a half-dozen witnesses and probably two dozen people who were privy to some portion of the events of late Wednesday night and early Thursday morning, there are a few things upon which most people agree.

Gunn was leaving a neighborhood card game a block over sometime around 3 a.m. A female companion who left the game at the same time said she and Gunn saw the police cruiser near the house as they were starting to leave. They walked a short distance and then went their separate ways.

Somewhere over the next few hundred feet — in the neighborhood where Gunn had spent most of his life — an altercation between cop and Gunn ensued. What started the altercation isn’t clear, but neighbors said a rash of car break-ins a couple of blocks over had been mentioned by police.

A “slight struggle,” as Montgomery Police Chief Ernest Finley called it, took place. Then a chase that ended up in the front yard of Colvin Hinson, Gunn’s next-door neighbor. Hinson heard Gunn pounding on his front door, screaming for help and calling out for his mother.

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fired. At his news conference later, Finley said the officer saw a weapon on Gunn.

It turned out to be a painter’s stick.

What happened after the shooting raised the ire of Gunn’s family and neighbors even more. Gunn’s mother said she could hear her son screaming for help, but paramedics that arrived on the scene were turned away. Colvin and Muhammad also heard Gunn’s screams and confirmed that paramedics never went over to check on Gunn.

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