It was about 2:30 a.m. Saturday morning when Sarah McCartney heard a banging at her front door. The young mother, alone with her 1-year-old son, rushed to the door thinking that something might have happened to her husband. But the man standing there wasn’t her husband, but a young black man.
McCartney quickly shut the door and called 911 to report an attempted robbery.
“I need help. There’s a guy breaking into my front door, he’s trying to kick it down,” McCartney is heard pleading through tears on a recording of the 911 call released by WCNC.com, an NBC affiliate in Charlotte, N.C. on Tuesday. She told the dispatcher that her husband works nights and that he has guns at home but that she couldn’t find any.
“Oh my God,” McCartney says over and over. “He’s in the front yard yelling.”
“I need help,” she said, crying.
When McCartney saw the police outside of her home, she’s heard on the 911 tape saying, “Oh, please let them get him.”
They did.
Jonathan Ferrell, 24, was killed by police in a bizarre series of events that began with a car crash along a rural stretch of road near McCartney’s home, and ended not long after he dragged himself from the wreckage and found himself on her doorstep seeking help.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg police say that three officers responding to
McCartney’s 911 call arrived at her home and found Ferrell nearby. When Ferrell saw the officers he advanced or ran toward them, police say, and one of the officers shot him with a Taser. When that didn’t stop him, Officer Randall Kerrick pulled out his gun and fired 12 shots at Ferrell, hitting him with 10.
Police say that Ferrell was unarmed at the time of the shooting and was no robber at all–just someone looking for help at the the first house he saw.
