Quanell X says Freeport officer-involved shooting taught him lesson
FREEPORT, TX (KTRK) -- Activist Quannel X surprised a lot of people Wednesday when he told a crowd of 100 outside the Freeport Police Department that the officer who shot Ron Sneed inside his girlfriend's apartment that afternoon didn't have a choice.
"Many of these shootings, officers should be indicted for killing these unarmed men," he told them. "But in a case like this, I don't think protests are warranted, and I think we should pray for the police officer as well as the family involved in this case."
X says he heard several stories about the shooting while he was on the way to Freeport. But he got the real story straight from Sneed's girlfriend who told him she woke up to a gun in her face.
"The girlfriend said to me 'Mr. X, when I woke up he had a gun in my face,' And I said, 'Was the gun real?' She said 'Yes it was real.' She said when the police came in, the police told him put the gun down. He said no, then turned the gun back toward her head and pointed at her head. That's when police officer fired the shots to kill him."
X tells Eyewitness News Freeport's police chief let him see the crime scene, and that went a long way.
"I think that police chief in Freeport should be looked at as an example of how to handle a shooting dealing with some young African American male," X says. "The way he worked with the community instantly to deal with what was happening, the way he gave me unprecedented access to a lot of the facts that I could see for myself was able to suppress and quell a lot of the anger, the frustration, and the desire to riot."
As Sneed's family deals with his death, upset that the officer didn't use pepper spray or a Taser, and that officer deals with the fact he took a life to save one, Quannel X says it reminded him that jumping to conclusions helps no one.
"It was a learning experience for me to make sure that we as leaders of our people, we have to make sure that as quick as we possibly can gather as much of the facts as we can and be very skeptical of what you hear, investigate the facts for yourself as best you can as quickly as you can, then take a position."
X added that he believes Sneed had made up in his mind that this "was the way he was going to go out."
