On Saturday, January 8, in the mid-afternoon, East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office deputies assisted the EBR police with a search for Keaughn Willis, who was wanted for domestic violence charges. (This story in the Advocate provides a run-down of what was in the arrest report and the various charges against Keaughn. The family says there was not a valid arrest warrant for Keaughn, and I haven’t seen proof otherwise.)
They went to the Willis's family apartment in Baton Rouge – because the home was outside of the city, it’s within the sheriff’s jurisdiction, which is why the police summoned EBRSO deputies to assist. It appears that law enforcement thought that Keaughn would be there. As best as I can tell, the officers appear to have been intent on arresting Keaughn (with a question as to the warrant—I speculate that the police thought they would find the victim there), although some news sources say that they appeared at the apartment only to “question” him.
The EBRSO has said that the following happened: They knocked on the door of the Willis apartment. Deaughn Willis – Keaughn’s twin brother, also 25 years old – answered the door with a gun in hand, according to the police. An EBRSO deputy opened fire and killed Deaughn. Hours later, Keaughn received word his brother had been killed by police, returned to the apartment, and turned himself in during the early hours of Sunday, January 9.
EBRSO deputies do not wear body cams, so, while Trinelle Willis, Deaughn and Keaughn’s mother, said that the police version of events was not correct – her version is much different, as will be explained below – there is no complete video evidence. (There were EBR city police present who were wearing body cams, but that footage has not been released for unknown reasons.) Louisiana state police are in charge of investigating the shooting, and the deputy who killed Deaughn, a man named Eno Guillot, was permitted to return to work the next day. This strikes me as unusual if only because most law enforcement officers who kill people are generally required to take time off. For example, here’s the recommended procedure by the International Association of Chiefs of Police:
In the immediate aftermath of a shooting, the department should place any involved officer on administrative leave pending counseling by an agency-designated mental health provider.
While law enforcement stuck to their mistaken identity story – police notably released a lot of information about Keaughn’s alleged crimes but nothing about the shooting — evidence has emerged that makes the EBRSO’s version look fishy.
First, there’s the picture of the front door to the apartment, which clearly shows two bullet holes where Deputy Eno Guillot fired his gun (which was a military-style semi-automatic) through the door into the apartment. Next, there was the suspicious fact that Deaughn did not have a gun. Even law enforcement admits no gun was found in the apartment, and no one alleges that Deaughn ever fired a weapon.
Then, last week, parts of a video were released that were taken from a neighbor’s Ring camera. The video sheds more light on what happened, although it also raises more questions.
First, the video clearly shows Deputy Guillot and at least 4 other deputies (there may have been more outside of the scene) approach the apartment and bang on the door. They do not announce themselves as police although you can hear them talking on the video about how the residents “know it’s police” and that they think someone is inside the apartment. Notably, no one yells, “Police” or anything else.
The video is oddly sliced into fragments, probably because Ring cameras don’t record continuously. The next section picks up when the shooting began. You can’t see who is behind the door, although you can clearly see Guillot shoot his gun at the door; he is the only one with the gun drawn. Another deputy yells, “Gun fired,” then there’s a whoop of excitement or relief, and the same deputy asks if everyone is okay. “Yup,” someone says, and the deputies back away from the door as if they were unsure who had fired the shot.
According to Trinelle Willis, the banging frightened her, but she did not know who was at the door. She called 911 to report a potential burglary and took her other children, who were younger, into the back of the apartment. “It really scared me. No one knocks on my door that way,” she later said in an interview.
She told local news that her son, Deaughn, opened the door to see who it was, then she saw him close the door before he was shot and killed by Deputy Guillot. (The 911 call has not been released.) Louisiana is an open-carry state, although it does require a license for concealed carry.
After Deaughn was shot, as he lay bleeding, Trinelle Willis, who is a licensed nurse, tried to help her son during the 45 minutes it took for an ambulance to arrive. During that wait, she was on the phone with 911. In an interview, Trinelle Willis said she was asked to come out of the house with her “hands up;” she said she was reluctant to do so because her son was bleeding out, but she did because she thought they would provide help.
In the same interview, Ms. Willis said that a woman – who seemed to be law enforcement – came to the apartment after the shooting to arrest Ms. Willis. According to Ms. Willis, the woman told her that a “shooter was at large” – at this point, it doesn’t seem that Ms. Willis knew who had shot her son – as she took her away, begging for help for her son. She said that the woman asked Guillot “what to do with her.”
Mrs. Willis’s version and the video vary substantively from the police version released that day. It’s not clear why EBRSO was conducting an armed raid or what kind of warrant they had, if any. Finally, no deputy yells “POLICE,” which is pretty common. It looks like the kind of apartment building where people would hear that.
Note: Last night, an interview and partial body cam footage was “leaked” to the local news station. According to the reporter, the state police and EBRSO claim the body cam footage doesn’t provide a clear view, although the whole thing has not been released. What is shown in the clip is hard to see and doesn’t show anything new. The second mysterious “leak” was a partial clip of investigators interviewing Willis’s step-father, who suggests there was a gun in the apartment hidden in the closet. A little snippet of the Louisiana State Police report released with the interview details how investigators threatened Ms. Willis and her partner with criminal charges during the course of their work. Question: If this little piece of evidence was leaked, where is the rest of the report? What does D.A. Hillar Moore think about this.
A few specific aspects of this stand out to me. First is the deputy who fired his gun, Guillot. Guillot appears to have been a sniper in the Marines and, as a result, he was allowed to use a military-style weapon (some reports say an AR-15) rather than a regular handgun because EBR policy allows officers to use the gun they are most familiar with. It’s not clear to me why he had that gun that day unless they were expecting to raid the apartment military-style. But also, why would they plan on that? And why would they shoot through a door without knowing who is behind it? Assuming generously that the EBRSO thought Keaughn was there, wouldn’t they also be concerned his partner or other people were there as well?
Second, the EBRSO has a reputation for poor management and excessive violence. The East Baton Rouge Parish Prison (the jail) has consistently been one of the deadliest in Louisiana with deaths far exceeding the national average. (Another man just died in the jail last month.) According to Police Score Card, EBRSO gets more money than most other law enforcement offices, and they are more violent. It’s also worth noting that EBRSO has a record of disproportionately arresting, harassing, and injuring Black residents. Black residents are nearly 50% of the population, but 75% of the people killed by EBRSO deputies. (The sheriff Sid Gautreaux is white and has been in office since 2007.) ERBSO is not the only sheriff’s office in Louisiana accused of excessive violence, especially against Black residents, and, of course, it was only in 2016 that East Baton Rouge was the site of protests and media attention after local police killed Alton Sterling in front of the Triple S Food Mart. Sterling was unarmed, and the city settled a civil lawsuit brought by his family. The officers who killed Sterling were never charged.
Finally, the investigation of this shooting appears particularly suspect. There have been various allegations that the East Baton Rouge Coroner’s Office has engaged in some misconduct in the past. I checked with the coroner’s office and was told the following:
After his death on January 8, 2022, a complete forensic autopsy was completed on January 10, 2022, prior to our release of the deceased’s remains to the funeral home. He was released to the family’s choice of funeral home on January 11, 2022.
The decision to cremate is the family’s. We authorized a cremation several weeks later on January 31, 2022 in response to the family’s wishes. That cremation request was sent to us by the family’s funeral home.
The coroner aside, there are other unusual aspects of this incident. For one thing, the EBRSO didn’t release a statement after the shooting. I have a lot of questions about the procedures after the shooting. For example, this manual from the International Association of Chiefs of Police from 2016 sets forth the recommended procedures when the police kill someone. The suggested procedures include things like securing the scene, attending to the injured, questioning witnesses, preserving evidence, etc. In the Ring video, which is partial, the officers just kind of slink away, as if they didn’t know what was going on. Maybe they didn’t. (In her interview, Ms. Willis indicates that there was a follow-up, but it appears that this was done in a fog of confusion over what happened and that no aid was provided to her son for some amount of time.)
The Louisiana state police took control of the investigation, and it’s not clear to me what they found or did or when. In response to my request for an update, a representative told me that the “investigative report has been completed and delivered to the East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney’s Office.”
There are plenty of reasons to question the judgment of the Louisiana state police. For example, a USA Today investigation into whistleblowers in law enforcement uncovered a case in which former trooper Carl Cavalier was fired when he tried to expose the departmental cover-up of a 2019 death of an unarmed driver named Ronald Greene, which is now the subject of a federal investigation. (Troopers tackled and pinned Greene to the ground, face-down, until he died.) The head of the Louisiana State Police has even said he would “welcome” a pattern-and-practice investigation into the department’s disproportionate use of force against Black residents. But despite a recommendation to charge one of the troopers who killed Greene, no one has been arrested. (Louisiana is also a state with very few protections on the state level and an extremely weak record of transparency in law enforcement misconduct.)
The case is now with the EBR District Attorney Hillar Moore. In response to the rising violence in East Baton Rouge, Moore has said that he will implement a new “crime reduction” plan aimed at “tackling the more complex root causes of community violence.” Now, Moore is a guy who wanted to stuff the basement full of tens of thousands of people who couldn’t pay their traffic tickets and feed them McDonald’s, so I confess I do not necessarily trust his judgment. But, if he wanted to start building trust in the community, releasing more information on this shooting and being transparent with the community would be a good start.
Without comprehensive video nor transparency on the part of law enforcement, everyone is left wondering what will happen. I reached out to the EBRSO and Hillar Moore’s office. Neither responded. None of the law enforcement departments have posted media briefings or any kind of information. Thus far, information about this shooting came to light through the efforts of community advocates, the local NAACP, and Ms. Willis. EBRSO hasn’t reached out to the family (nor has the DA or EBR police) to provide any explanation or condolences. Maybe I am shouting into the void here, but I will keep reporting and updating as more becomes public.