Durham DA won‘t charge security guard who shot, killed NC Central student
Durham NC Sept 27 2019
The Durham district attorney‘s office says it won‘t press charges in the case of a North Carolina Central University student shot and killed by a security guard in the parking lot of his apartment complex last year.
DeAndre Ballard, 23, sustained at Campus Crossings on Cornwallis Road in Durham. Lavar Mitchell, a 41-year-old security guard employed by the N.C. Detective Agency, told investigators he shot Ballard after an altercation inside Mitchell‘s vehicle.
Durham District Attorney Satana Deberry has said little about the case publicly since she took office in 2019, .
But on Friday, Deberry spokesperson Sarah Willets told WRAL News that Echols made the determination not to seek charges following an investigation by the Durham Police Department. After reexamining the case with detectives when she took office, Willets said Deberry found no evidence to support charges against Mitchell.
“Presentation of the evidence in this case was made to DA Deberry on Feb. 28 at her request as an extra step to ensure she agreed with the determination that homicide charges were not supported,” Willets said.
Echols, however, disputes the claim that he was the first to make the call on the case.
In an interview last week, he said he wasn‘t ready to make up his mind about the case before he left office because the investigation wasn‘t complete.
“For me to have made a decision before Dec. 31, it would have been premature,” Echols said.
The , which wasn‘t completed until late March, showed Ballard that could have come from a single bullet. The toxicology report showed no alcohol in his system.
Miguel Staten, Ballard‘s uncle, said the family learned earlier this year that the district attorney decided not to take the case to a grand jury, a decision he called “premature.”
“For her not to press charges, it‘s just unbelievable that she wouldn‘t,” Staten said. “It doesn‘t seem like a thorough enough investigation had been done.”
Mitchell – and his supervisor at the N.C. Detective Agency, a Durham-based private security company – that he was working his guard shift in the driver‘s seat of his vehicle at Campus Crossings when he noticed a black man pulling on the doors of a silver car in the parking lot.
When he asked the man what was going on, the man climbed into Mitchell‘s passenger seat.
“I yelled multiple times at him to get out my car and I also said to him, ‘What are you doing,‘” Mitchell wrote in an email to his company shortly after the shooting. “He struck me on the right side of my forehead, we then began to fight inside my car.”
The fight continued as the pair exited the car, Mitchell said.
“He came at me again, this time putting his hands by his waist band,” Mitchell wrote. “I took my weapon out and [shot] him because I feared for my life.”
Mitchell‘s comments come from , the licensing agency that investigates shootings and other incidents involving security guards in the state.
Those documents show part of the incident was witnessed by an unarmed guard at the site, Roosevelt Waller, who heard his partner shouting at another man.
“From the sound of his voice, I knew he was in trouble,” Waller wrote in his own statement to his bosses at the N.C. Detective Agency. “I never heard him use that tone of voice before.”
Waller saw the fight between the two men outside the car and was about 5 feet away when Mitchell fired one shot into the man‘s abdomen.
The driver of the silver car parked where Mitchell first spotted the man drove away at some point during the fight, the statements show. But police told PPSB investigators that a pizza delivery employee also witnessed the shooting and corroborated Mitchell and Waller‘s statements.
Ballard wasn‘t identified by police – when family and friends filed a missing persons report. He was declared dead at Duke University Medical Center at about 11 p.m. Sept. 17, 2018, less than an hour after he was shot.
The police incident report from that night lists the killing as a justifiable homicide, closed on Jan. 3, 2019.
Both guards, PPSB records show, were properly licensed by the state, and Mitchell had held certifications from the board dating back to at least 2006.
Records also show the N.C. Detective Agency and its employees were cited several times by the board from 2010 to 2012 for providing false statements and failing to property train guards.
Kevin Ladd, the company‘s vice president, did not return a call seeking comment Friday. But he told WRAL News in a September 2018 interview that he believed the shooting was justified.
Staten, Ballard‘s uncle, disagrees. He thinks the case should have gone to a grand jury. And both family and friends have said they don‘t believe they know the full story of what happened the night the North Carolina Central senior was killed.
To get those answers, Staten said the family is working to get more detailed information about the investigation from police and the district attorney‘s office. It‘s a process he said has taken far too long.
“It‘s just strange how they‘ve been postponing everything with the case,” Staten said. “It‘s like they‘re doing everything they can to drag it out to prevent info from being released to my family and the public.”
