BART shooting similar to 1992 incident

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- More than 16 years ago, Bay Area Rapid Transit investigators dealt with a very similar shooting of a young African-American man by a BART officer.

In January 1993, protesters rallied outside of BART offices, demanding an independent investigation into the shooting of 19-year-old Jerrold Hall.

Hall was shot in the back of the head two months earlier outside a Hayward BART station.

The BART officer had been investigating a complaint of a stolen Walkman on one of the trains and stopped to question Hall and a friend.

More than 16 years after the incident, Hall's father Cornelius spoke to ABC7 News from Pensacola, Florida.

"The cop confronted him and he asked the policeman, 'what did I do,' and it went on from there," Cornelius Hall said. "The officer hit him in the chest with the shotgun, breaking the butt of the shotgun over his head."

His son then walked away, Hall said.

Mike Healy, a BART spokesperson at the time, remembers the officer was cleared after the BART Firearms Review Board concluded the use of lethal force was justified.

"The young man who was shot attacked the officer and then turned around and walked away," Healy said. "The officer's account was that he believed he was going for a gun that he had hidden somewhere on the edge of the parking lot."

No gun was ever found.

The BART officer in the Hall shooting, Fred Crabtree, later suffered an accidental death.

The FBI investigated the case and found no wrong doing, a finding that disappointed the Hall family.

"It wasn't as heated as this one, it wasn't as explosive is, because there was no video tape, so it was just the war of words that goes on," Copwatch member Andrea Prichett, who remembers the public's reaction, said.

The Oscar Grant shooting earlier this month has reopened some wounds for Hall. After their son's death the Hall family asked the BART board for oversight of the department.

"They promised me after my son's case was over that they would try to get a police review board, which they didn't," Hall said.

Today, following the Oscar Grant shooting, many are again asking for an independent review board to oversee this investigation.

>> VIDEO VAULT: ABC7 coverage of the 1992 BART shooting

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east bay news, lyanne melendez

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