Police cleared in killing

Keith Paul

Monday, Oct. 2, 2000 | 10:44 a.m.

A Clark County coroner's inquest jury deliberated about 25 minutes before deciding two North Las Vegas Police officers were justified when they shot and killed a man during an August drug raid.

Officers Wayne Blackard, 28, and Christopher Corrado, 30, testified another officer shouted they were police officers, ordered the residents to open the door and pounded on the door of 54-year-old Johnnie Weatherspoon's apartment about 9:15 p.m. on Aug. 30. When no one opened the door, the door was bashed in and they went inside the apartment in the 2100 block of Las Vegas Boulevard North.

But Barbara Crockett, Weatherspoon's girlfriend, testified she didn't hear anyone knocking, only the door being smashed open. She then ran into the bedroom where Weatherspoon was on the bed. She said the officers didn't identify themselves before Weatherspoon fired a gun at them.

Blackard testified he saw a woman, Crockett, run across the living room and he identified himself and told her to stop. She continued into the bedroom. All of the officers, members of the narcotics unit serving a search warrant, were wearing hoods and masks, but the word "police" was printed in reflective lettering on their body armor. The officers were carrying assault weapons.

Blackard said he yelled to the man on the bed that he was a police officer and was serving a search warrant.

"I saw a muzzle flash and felt something hit the inside of my thigh," Blackard testified. "The second shot went into my hand, out the inside of my hand. I returned fire."

Blackard is still recovering from the hand wound. His body armor stopped the bullet that hit his thigh.

Corrado testified he had also moved into the bedroom doorway when the first shot was fired. Weatherspoon appeared to have been shot and was on the bed with the gun in his hand not moving. Weatherspoon then quickly raised up his hand and fired another shot that went between the heads of the two officers and landed in the wall, Corrado testified.

Both officers then fired again, killing Weatherspoon. Crockett was crouched in a corner of the room and was not injured.

A Clark County judge signed a search warrant for Weatherspoon's apartment after a police informant was sent into the home and bought crack cocaine.

Weatherspoon is the uncle of 22-year-old Markus Weatherspoon, who was charged in the June 14 robbery of a Las Vegas restaurant where Metro Police Officer Pete Rossi was shot and blinded in one eye by a bullet fired by one of the fleeing robbers. Four people have been arrested in connection to the robbery.

But Corrado testified that when he was serving the warrant, the name Johnnie Weatherspoon didn't mean anything to him.

"I was not retaliating in any way," he said.

Several of Weatherspoon's family members were sitting in the front row of the courtroom during the inquest. When the verdict was announced, the family left the room with several of them crying.