Defending DJ

0:07That day was full of laughs. We got there, the energy was great, my whole family was there. I think I made all the games and homecoming, we were all there. We had driven up and we were there to see the game. DJ, he was my shadow. He and I were together all the time. My family's really close, really close, always been really close. We are like our own little universe, the five of us. Dad called him DJ. Mom would call him Danny. Danny, always. He was the surrogate dad to his siblings. They looked up to him. I struggled with math as a high school student, and he'd be the first one to sit down and be like, okay, well, let's figure it out.

0:59He was, oh my gosh,

1:05a joy, a Pied Piper in the neighborhood. All of the kids loved him. The biggest smile you've ever seen and a very gentle spirit. We had driven up there the same day, watched the game, hung out, and then drove back home.

1:26So very early in the morning, I was startled awake, and I said to Angela, someone is at the door. It was two police officers. They said, Mr. Henry, your son has been in an accident. He handed me a slip of paper and said, you need to call this number. The nurse on the phone said, are you Mrs. Henry? I said, yes. I heard my son was in an accident. And I kept saying, well, what happened? What happened? And she said, he was shot. And I said, who would shoot him? I can't understand who would shoot him. The nurse gave the phone to one of the attending physicians who got on the phone and said he died.

2:07I remember just falling to my knees. DJ Henry was a 20-year-old Pace University junior back in October of 2010 when he was fatally shot in his car. I heard what sounded like firefighters, and I heard a car screech. I didn't think anything of it. Homecoming, someone's probably had fireworks. The last thing I thought about was what ended up being the case. Everybody wasn't buying the original story.

2:36James Brown:It immediately didn't fit together, so I had suspicions from day one. People believed fervently that they knew what happened. And whenever you hear of a case like this, you can't believe first impressions. Something really significant happened in this car. Do you keep evidence from every case that you handle? This was an unusual situation. I needed it to be here so perhaps a day like today would come when we could tell the story of what really happened here.

3:10I never thought in a million years it would turn out the way it did. We don't need some version of the story that protects one side or the other. Our whole goal was to just get the truth. It was in the early morning of October 17, 2010. It was early. It was after the midnight hour. The serenity of Dan and Angela Henry's home in Easton, Massachusetts, was shattered with the unfathomable news that their eldest son, DJ, had been shot to death. And I think they heard me scream that he died and came back down. And I just remember laying on the floor crying. And Kyle came over and stood over me. And he just grabbed my shoulders and he said, Mom, look at me.

3:57It's going to be okay. Their younger son, Kyle. We just rushed out of the house. I don't even remember if we locked anything up. I didn't even have shoes on. The drive from Easton to the Westchester County Medical Center in New York was over three hours. We didn't want him there by himself, and so we prayed all the way. What was it like when you got to the hospital? As soon as we saw him, we all just screamed and cried. And Dan grabbed him and just held him and talked to him, prayed with him, told him that we loved him. To see your brother, the person you grew up with, my whole life has been with him.

4:40And then you see this person lifeless, and it was the most horrifying thing I've ever seen in my life. He had scrapes and scratches and cuts that he didn't have. I just couldn't believe it. The Henry's daughter, Amber, got to the hospital later. So my mom came out of the doors. She said, I need to come take you to say goodbye. It was definitely a moment I knew right there that my life was going to change. The life the Henrys built was an American dream. Dan, an Ivy League graduate, enjoyed a successful career as a human resources executive. His wife Angela made the choice to stay home with their three children.

5:29We knew right away that we wanted to work as hard as we could to provide for our children a stable home, two parents. Amber, a recent college graduate, is the youngest. We are so full of love, and we just want the best for each and every one of us. Kyle, an independent music artist, is in the middle. Always had each other's backs. Always been very strong in each other's lives. In the cafeteria right now. The cafeteria. Danny, a handsome student athlete, was the oldest. When he played sports, there was inevitably another Dan or Danny. And so Dan started calling him DJ. DJ embraced his family so much that it inspired him to get a tattoo.

6:18His first tattoo was family first. I looked down and saw what he did and said, oh, that was well played. The kid DJ. He's an amazing kid. that he wasn't perfect. Man, was he a good guy with immense promise. So what happened? How did the Henrys end up in a hospital crying over their 20-year-old son's body? Dan called the police investigator in charge and was floored by what he was told. So he said DJ was trying to run over two police officers and that they had to shoot him to stop him. The Henrys were dumbfounded. They knew DJ was out celebrating with friends after homecoming, but they could not imagine their son running down police with his car.

7:13Something had to have happened if that happened. What caused him to do something that's so outside of his character? And Brandon affirmed for us that he didn't. Brandon Cox, DJ's best friend, was also at the hospital. Brandon came in and sat down next to Danny's bed, and he just said he didn't deserve this. From what the Henry's could piece together, DJ, Brandon, and another friend were in DJ's car waiting outside of a bar, and police asked them to move out of a fire lane. Brandon said they weren't doing anything, and that out of the clear blue, some guy flashes across with a gun and starts shooting.

7:53And then before he knows it, he's on the car and he's shooting at them. Brandon was sitting next to DJ in the car. He was shot in the arm but escaped serious injury. And we said, Brandon, we need to know everything. And Brandon said, no, we were driving, we were leaving. And he just kept saying he didn't deserve this. The family wanted answers, and that morning headed to the Mount Pleasant police station just hours after saying goodbye to their son. And we wanted to look them in the eyes and just say, you know, you need to know a little bit about our son. What the Henrys did not know is that the police chief, Louis Alagno, had already conducted a press conference implicating their son.

8:37James Brown:At about 1.20 a.m. this morning, Mount Pleasant police received a call of a disturbance. In response to Finnegan's, fight in progress. Alagno said several police officers responded to a fight at Finnegan's Grill, a local bar about two miles from Pace University's campus. Reportedly, unruly patrons had spilled into the parking lot. It looks like it's just a large gathering of the bar outside. According to Alagno, when a policeman approached the car in the fire lane, the vehicle sped off and struck an officer. For an unknown reason, a vehicle that had been parked in a fire lane near Finnegan's Grill accelerated from the scene.

9:21James Brown:The Village of Pleasantville officer attempted to stop that vehicle. That vehicle struck that officer. He was propelled onto the hood. The officer down, good fire vehicle. Olagno said the car continued to accelerate and the officer on the hood of the car shot the driver. That driver was D.J. Henry. I'm truly saddened by the events that occurred this evening. My condolences go out to the family of the young man that died in this event. The Henrys didn't want condolences. They wanted to know how Chief Elagno could make a public statement about their son without talking to them first. And you asked the question that they would conduct a press conference without even having talked with you as family, and the response was...

10:08That's what the officers on the scene told me happened, basically. And we pressed and said, look, we want truth. What we want is truth. That moment began a long legal journey that would take the Henrys from a strip mall in New York all the way to the United States Department of Justice. We're not anti-police. We're just trying to understand what the facts tell us. Was it a justified shooting or was it not justified? Because if it wasn't, it was murder.

10:41WCBS Newstime 104.

10:43James Brown:Police in Westchester in the community of Mount Pleasant fire at a speeding vehicle killing the driver identified as a Pace University student. We were pushing hard against a very strong current in those early days because they beat us out there with a narrative. And that narrative, as DJ's parents saw it, was that police were blaming DJ for his own death. Good morning everyone. The day after D.J. was killed, Chief Louis Olagno held a second press conference and gave more details. The Pleasantville officer that was involved was police officer Aaron Hess. Police officer Hess was the officer that ended up on the hood of the deceased vehicle.

11:26James Brown:Officer Hess drew his pistol and fired into the vehicle. And, he said, DJ was accelerating toward a second officer, Ronald Beckley, who had also fired at his car. Another officer, Mount Pleasant Officer Beckley, was also standing in a fire lane as this vehicle drove towards him. He also discharged his weapon at the vehicle. The effort clearly was to villainize our son. It was to make him seem like a criminal thug that needed to be stopped. But DJ's friends say that is not how it happened. We weren't doing anything wrong. We were in the wild, wild west. That's what it felt like. DJ's teammate, Desmond Hines, was in the car that night with DJ, Brandon, and two other friends who went to Finnegan's.

12:12As long as the football team was together, that's where we wanted to be, having fun. After that fight broke out, the bartender called police, and soon six officers arrived. DJ and his passengers were not involved and they headed to the doors. So it seemed a little bit early, but the lights came on and the bouncers were telling everybody to get out. DJ's friend, Brandon Cox. They said it's done, it's done, so we're leaving. You can see DJ here in security footage just minutes before he was shot. DJ, Brandon and Desmond waited outside in DJ's car for their two other friends. Brandon was in the front seat.

12:59As they were waiting, he remembers an officer tapping on the back window asking them to move. And he started to make a forward motion to move forward. That's when DJ puts the car into drive and starts to pull away. He just pulled off slowly. And so where we were parked, it was like, a curve in the roadway. As we come around that curve, I can see somebody running from in between those two cars with their gun raised. I look and I see this dance. Two hands on something. I didn't see the gun. Two hands. Pointed at? Pointed at the vehicle. Within seconds, that somebody, Officer Hess, was up on the hood shooting.

13:43I could feel something hit my arm. At that moment, not sure what's going on, not sure what it is, and I'm just ducking down to just try to get out of harm's way. Brandon and Desmond both say they never saw that second officer, Ronald Beckley, at all. I didn't hear anything. It was like everything was silent. But I just saw bullet holes after bullet holes. There was three or four total. At least one bullet hit the seat next to Desmond. Brandon had that graze wound to the arm, and DJ was shot twice, through his lungs and his heart. DJ goes, they shot me, they shot me. And then he just made this moan, this moan that I will never forget.

14:32DJ's car crashed into a parked cruiser and stalled to a stop here. Two officers took DJ out, handcuffed him, and laid him on the ground. Desmond remembers being pulled out by yet another officer. And he slammed me on the ground. And I go, officer, we did absolutely nothing wrong. And he had a gun, and he pointed it to the back of my head. He said, shut the f*** up. And at that point, I thought I was going to die. Get the f*** out! Get the f*** out! I was asking her on the case, what happened? What happened? Daniel Parker was friends with Desmond and DJ from the football team. And no one said anything.

15:14You know, everyone was just like staring. He came out of Finnegan's shortly after hearing a disturbance outside. Cell phone video shot by a fellow student captured that scene. Daniel spotted Desmond here on the sidewalk also in handcuffs. I was like, Desmond, are you okay? And he was saying, like, they shot DJ. This is dash cam video from a cruiser that pulled in after the shooting. On the right is Officer Hess. Behind him is DJ lying in the road. You know, I saw that no one was by him. And I was looking, I was like, you've got to be kidding me. Like, what's happening right now? Why is no one helping him?

15:58The first person to try and revive DJ was this woman in the white sweater, a civilian. I saw her struggling to try to give him compressions and I was like, hey, you know, that's my teammate. Can I go help him? I said, I'm CPR certified. Can I help him? No answer. He's like, get the back. And his eyes was open and I saw blood in his mouth. And that's the moment I was like, y 'all killed him. Daniel says after saying that, he was also thrown to the ground and handcuffed. Ten long minutes had elapsed from that first call about the shooting. before DJ was finally hooked up to a defibrillator.

16:40In the days after losing their eldest son, Dan and Angela Henry had to confront more than just their grief. They were facing two very different versions of events, one from the police and another from DJ's friends. So we immediately had a conflict. Clearly we knew we needed to have counsel, but I needed a really good local attorney who would push hard to get at truth. The Henrys hired Michael Sussman, a legendary civil rights attorney from New York.

17:15James Brown:And I remember in that first meeting, Dan Wright looking at me and saying to me, I don't want to make this about race. I don't want that to be the narrative. I want to understand the details of why it happened. Officer Hess, his knee badly injured, was also taken to the hospital that night. And soon he, too, had a lawyer of his own. He doesn't see himself as some kind of hero. Aaron Hess is a victim.

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18:30I have to get up every day without him. I have to come home to an empty room.

18:37I'll often stare at his picture and just... I'll just talk to him. I'll just sit there and just really try to absorb the fact that this is how I'm supposed to be living now.

18:57In the months after DJ's death, as his family grieved, the Westchester District Attorney's Office began an investigation, standard procedure at the time. In January of 2011, they convened a grand jury to see if Officer Hess should be charged with any crime. DJ's father, Dan Roy, was called to testify. The only questions I was asked two weeks before the grand jury wrapped up was, did I know that DJ drank occasionally? That's it. A month later, Mr. Henry got a call. Aaron Hess was not indicted on any charge. The DA's office in Westchester County executed a sham. Pretty strong words. Yeah, that's what they did, and if I could think of a stronger word, I'd use it.

19:47James Brown:The gentleman was not charged with anything. Criminally negligent homicide, manslaughter, murder, anything. There should have been a charge and there should have been a criminal trial. The Henry's should have had, if you will, the satisfaction, not that it's much satisfaction, of believing that their son's life had that much value. Hours after the grand jury decision, after Sussman's repeated urging, the U.S. Department of Justice began a separate investigation looking into a possible civil rights violation, a federal crime. Weeks later, Hess's union named him Officer of the Year. They said afterwards the award was not meant to be public.

20:27They wanted to do that privately to boost Aaron Hess's morale. To boost the officers' morale. Because he had been through a lot. Because he had been through a lot. While the Department of Justice was looking into the case, the Henrys filed wrongful death suits against Aaron Hess, the village of Pleasantville, where Hess worked, and the town of Mount Pleasant. where DJ was shot. Can you use your right hand, please? In August 2012, nearly two years after DJ's death, Hess came to the U.S. District Courthouse in Westchester for a deposition in the wrongful death cases. Were you the first police officer on the scene?

21:13Yes. With their attorney, Michael Sussman, asking questions, Dan and Angela Henry were there. It was really, really important to us to be in the room. We wanted to look in the eye the guy that shot our son. We wanted to hear him tell us why, to see his face, to have him look us in the eye, to see Danny when he looked us in the eyes. That night specifically was a bad night. I only reacted to what I thought, that I was going to be killed. Originally, I was worried that I was going to go in there and be just filled with anger, but I saw him and I just... I didn't feel anything for him. At the time DJ was killed, in 2010, Aaron Hess was 33 years old, married and expecting twins.

22:03He had served four years in the Marines and had been a police officer since 2000, first in New York City and later for his hometown of Pleasantville, New York. That was Aaron Hess, well-liked. Brian Sokoloff represents Aaron Hess.

22:19James Brown:Up until October 17, 2010, he had never fired his weapon in the line of duty. Response to Finnegan's, fight in progress. Hess arrived at Finnegan's shortly after the call went out about the fight. When that officer tapped on DJ's window, Hess says he was standing in the parking lot, about 30 feet away. Aaron Hess, who's around the bend, observes three things happen simultaneously. A, he hears an engine rev. B, he hears an officer yell, stop that car or stop that vehicle. And he sees an officer get turned off balance. Turned off balance, suggesting that? Suggesting that something was amiss. Hess says that's why he stepped across the road, to face DJ's car as it drove toward him.

23:19Could you determine its rate of speed?

23:23James Brown:Fast. He puts up his hand and yells, stop, stop. The car doesn't stop. He draws his weapon. Why didn't you move out of the way of the vehicle? because I thought the vehicle was going to stop. Why did you believe that? I believed it was going to stop because every other vehicle I've asked to stop in my career have stopped. As the vehicle was coming towards me, I lunged forward as it hit my legs. At that time, as I was on the hood, the engine revved up again. and seemingly it seemed to me that I was trying to get thrown off the vehicle. At that time is when I fired my weapon.