Man to co-worker: ‘I emptied a whole clip’ on cops after sister hit with rubber bullet
The man charged with shooting at law enforcement officers trying to clear rioters from 21st and Arkansas last month told a co-worker that he “emptied a whole clip” on officers after his sister was hit with a rubber bullet while holding a baby.
An arrest affidavit released Friday in the criminal case against 28-year-old Henry E. Parker says he admitted to the co-worker that he’d fired on officers early on June 2. The co-worker recognized him in video of the shooting she’d seen on television news and on social media and confronted him about his involvement.
“Henry told her that he did it,” the affidavit says the co-worker told a detective investigating the case. The worker “said she asked him (Parker) if that was him in the video. Henry told her ‘yea don’t tell on me.’”
The affidavit goes on to say that “Henry told her his sister had been shot by police with a rubber bullet while holding an eight month old” and also said: “I emptied a whole clip.”
Parker’s defense attorney, Stephen Brave, in an email called the affidavit “an entirely one-sided version of events told from the perspective of the police” and said his client “is looking forward to proving his innocence in this matter.”
Parker is charged with nearly two dozen crimes in connection with the shooting: 19 counts of aggravated assault of a law enforcement officer, two counts of aggravated battery of a law enforcement officer and one count of criminal possession of a weapon by a felon. According to the affidavit, about 45 Wichita police and SWAT officers were in a riot line and in armored vehicles “attempting to disperse an unruly crowd” in the area of 900 W. 21st Street when they came under fire at around 1:20 a.m. on June 2.
Police Chief Gordon Ramsay has previously said officers fired tear gas, smoke rounds, flash grenades and foam bullets into the crowd that morning after rioters threw objects at police and refused to leave. The unrest followed a mostly peaceful protest calling for the end of police brutality in response to the May 25 death of George Floyd.
A bystander captured video footage of the man who shot back at the Wichita officers. Bullets or debris from the gunfire grazed at least two officers’ riot helmets, police have previously said. Several officers involved in the fray reported fearing for their lives, the affidavit says, but none were seriously hurt.
Police later found seven .40-caliber shell casings on a sidewalk along a backyard fence in the 2200 block of North Janette, the area from which the gunman was seen firing.
Two days after the shooting, the affidavit says a man told police that he had witnessed the shooting and saw the gunman working at a nearby gas station shortly after. Police went to the gas station, arrested Parker on an unrelated warrant and talked to the co-worker who disclosed that he had admitted to being the gunman.
The co-worker told police that Parker was working the night of the protests, left about two hours into his shift and returned a short time later. Video surveillance footage from the store shows Parker leaving at 1:13 a.m. — about seven minutes before the shooting — and returning at 1:25 a.m. in clothes and a car that matches the gunman’s, the affidavit says. A witness to the shooting told police that the gunman arrived in the area, got out of a car with a gun, fired several times toward officers, then immediately drove off.
When interviewed, Parker told police “he did go to the area at the approximate time of the shooting” to pick up a friend “but denied being the shooter.” He also denied having a gun that night.
Parker’s next court date is Aug. 6. He remains in the Sedgwick County Jail in connection with the shooting and other criminal cases.
This story was originally published July 17, 2020 at 4:58 PM.
