‘I Don’t Care About That!’: Trauma Nurse On Scene Of Deadly Shooting Fires Back At Off-Duty Deputy

The 911 call made by the sheriff’s deputy that shot and killed a Black man in North Carolina has been released. The city coun­cil has now request­ed that the U.S. Department of Justice get involved in the inves­ti­ga­tion. Deputy Jeffrey Hash called 911 after he shot Jason Walker on Saturday, Jan. 8, in Fayetteville, North Carolina
The almost four-minute call records Hash as say­ing, “I just had a male jump on my vehi­cle and broke my wind­shield. I just shot him. I am a deputy sher­iff.” “You said you shot him?” the dis­patch­er asked the deputy.

“Yes, he jumped on my car, please,” he respond­ed. When the dis­patch­er asked for his name, Hash said, “I am a lieu­tenant with the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office.” Later in the call, the dis­patch­er asks Hash if he is near the vic­tim, he replies, “I am. He’s gone. He’s gone, ma’am.” “Is he breath­ing?” the dis­patch­er inquires. The deputy answered, “No, ma’am, he is not. He’s gone.” Hash then asks for “units out ’cause there are peo­ple gath­er­ing.” During the call, the deputy tells the dis­patch­er that his vehi­cle is a red Ford F‑150. He then states, “He shat­tered my wind­shield.” Also heard on the call is an exchange that Hash had with a wit­ness, Elizabeth Ricks, the woman who tried to assist Walker after he was shot. The call cap­tures Hash telling her to leave the scene.

“Just keep mov­ing, ma’am,” he says to Ricks. She replies to him, “I’m a trau­ma nurse.” To her qual­i­fi­er, he says, “I’m a deputy sher­iff. Come here. He jumped on my vehi­cle. I just had to shoot him.” The dis­patch­er joins in the con­ver­sa­tion and asks for clar­i­ty on what actu­al­ly hap­pened, to which Hash sub­mit­ted his ver­sion. “I was dri­ving down the road and he came fly­ing across Bingham Drive, run­ning, and then I stopped so I wouldn’t hit him and he jumped on my car and start­ed scream­ing; pulled my wind­shield wipers off, and start­ed beat­ing my wind­shield and broke my wind­shield,” Hash recalled. “I had my wife and my daugh­ter in my vehi­cle.” The dis­patch­er asked, “Did he have any weapons, sir?” Hash said that Walker did not have a firearm, and again, assert­ed his ver­sion of the sto­ry, “He just tore my wipers off and start­ed beat­ing. … He bust­ed my wind­shield.” Turning her atten­tion to the vic­tim, who Hash had already said was not breath­ing, the dis­patch­er asked about how many peo­ple are present at the site of the crime. “There are tons of cars and peo­ple gath­er­ing around,” he stat­ed. The 911 call con­tin­ued to pick up con­ver­sa­tions from those who gath­ered around Walker’s body. One key voice is Ricks, the trau­ma nurse Hash told to “keep mov­ing.” Ricks can be heard say­ing that the man is still alive. Hash final­ly asks for help, say­ing, “He has a light pulse right now. I need EMS now.” The dis­patch­er asks where the man was shot, but nei­ther Hash nor Ricks has the infor­ma­tion. Hash reveals to the dis­patch­er, “I’m see­ing blood on his side, ma’am.”

Ricks is heard try­ing to save him, notwith­stand­ing Hash’s request for EMS’s arrival on the scene. The call records her in the back­ground ask­ing for a shirt or some­thing to stop the bleed­ing. Others in the back­ground repeat the dispatcher’s ques­tions about where Walker was shot, but Hash con­tin­ues to say that he doesn’t know and repeats his ver­sion of what hap­pened, “He was on the front of my vehi­cle. He jumped on my car.” Ricks snaps, “I don’t care about that, where is the entry point?” Hash respond­ed to her and says to the dis­patch­er, who tells him to stop talk­ing to the peo­ple on the scene, “People are hos­tile right now.” Hash’s “hos­tile” com­ment was cap­tured on the two-minute cell­phone video of the after­math of the shoot­ing, record­ed by Chase Sorrell, Ricks’ boyfriend. Ricks and Sorrell are key wit­ness­es to the fatal shooting.The Fayetteville Observer reports that the two say they were dri­ving about two car lengths behind Hash when the nurse saw Walker stand­ing on the side of the road. Ricks main­tains that Walker wait­ed for one car to go by before he start­ed to cross the street. That is when Hash’s truck came by and struck the 37-year-old Black man, and Hash got out of the car and shot the man four times, the nurse says. After that, she got out of her car to attempt to save his life as he lay dying next to the back wheels of the Ford pick­up truck.

Ricks’ account of Walker being hit by a car con­tra­dicts police claims released ear­li­er this week. Fayetteville Police Chief Gina Hawkins said on Sunday, Jan. 9, the pick­up truck had a “black box” that would have reg­is­tered if the vehi­cle struck “any per­son or thing.” She also added that one eye­wit­ness said to her office that Walker was not hit by the truck. The Fayetteville news­pa­per reports that Ricks says she gave a wit­ness state­ment to police at the scene of the shoot­ing. Since the shoot­ing, Hash has acquired rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Parrish Daughtry, his lawyer, shared on Tuesday that her client was “dev­as­tat­ed” about the inci­dent. She said, “Lt. Hash is dev­as­tat­ed for Mr. Walker’s fam­i­ly, his own fam­i­ly, the greater com­mu­ni­ty and dev­as­tat­ed by these events. Beyond that, I’m real­ly pro­hib­it­ed from dis­cussing the facts.” Walker’s fam­i­ly also acquired the ser­vices of a lawyer. Ben Crump, the civ­il rights attor­ney that has rep­re­sent­ed vic­tims in many high-pro­file cas­es such as those of George Floyd and Trayvon Martin, will rep­re­sent the inter­ests of the fam­i­ly of the deceased.