Police upgrade shooting charges against police cadet
By John Wayne Ferguson
The Galveston County Daily News
May 10, 2019
TEXAS CITY -- Law officers on Thursday levied more charges against a police cadet who last month was accused of accidentally shooting three classmates while attending a police training course.
Clayton Whatley, 21, of League City, was charged with two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, police said.
The new charges came after one of the shooting victims told investigators she believed Whatley might have been targeting her and accidentally fired a shot too early, police said.
Whatley on April 25 had been charged with a felony after firing a handgun inside a classroom at the College of the Mainland, where he was part of a police cadet training program.
The gunshot came after Whatley reached into a backpack during a class about defensive tactics, police said. He told investigators he fired the gun accidentally while he was reaching for a pencil, police said.
The bullet struck the ground and fragments hit three people. Two of the people, a man and a woman, were taken to the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston for treatment, police said.
Whatley, who police said does not have a license to carry a concealed weapon, was initially charged with unlawful carrying of a weapon in an institute of higher education, a third-degree felony.
Police continued investigating the incident after those charges were filed, according to a police complaint The Daily News obtained Friday.
Police on April 29 interviewed one of the people hit by the bullet fragments, a 29-year-old woman.
The woman told police she had become friends with Whatley over the first few months of the class, according to a complaint.
She told police Whatley had helped her study for a section of the class she did not understand. As thanks for his help, he asked her to buy him a Dr Pepper, according to the complaint.
After she bought him the drink, Whatley began to “get weird” and asked her to put gas in his truck and buy him a pack of cigarettes, according to the complaint.
Those interactions led to a falling out and the two stopped speaking, according to the complaint.
She also described an incident during which Whatley had punched her in the arm several times, seemingly playfully.
The woman told him to stop and “to start hitting on another male in the class,” according to the complaint.
Whatley stopped after being confronted by another other classmate, according to the complaint.
After the second incident, Whatley had begun to choose seats in the class directly behind the woman, according to the complaint. On the day of the shooting, Whatley had gotten into an argument with another student over a seat directly behind the woman, according to the complaint.
The woman told police she was in fear for life and believed Whatley intended to shoot her, but had mishandled the handgun, according to the complaint.
Police issued new warrants for Whatley’s arrest April 30. He was arrested Thursday in League City, according to police records.
His bond for the two assault charges was set at $20,000, according to court records. He was no longer in custody at the Galveston on Friday afternoon, according to Galveston County Jail records.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Shit, the most exciting thing that happened during the 23 years I was there occurred when the school’s head janitor entered the office of one of the college’s deans late one night and caught the Dean of Student Life getting a blow job from his secretary. (Both of them were married, but of course, not to each other.) The next day everybody at COM knew about it.
3 comments:
A blowjob isn't sex. Ask Bill Clinton.
What I want to know is how do students bring their firearms to COM on range day? Or does the College furnish firearms for qualifications?
When I was there, the college furnished the firearms.
We did have one incident where a police cadet brought his own gun, an automatic pistol. The idiot was showing it to other cadets inside one of the entrances to the Tech-Voc building when - you guessed it- the gun went off. Fortunately the only injury was to the concrete floor. The dipshit was ordered to pack up and leave ... for good!
Several days after I posted this article, I received an email from an academy instructor who was in the classroom when the shooting occurred. He said:
Such a bunch of crap!
He was fucking with the gun that was in his backpack. It went off into the concrete floor. Copper shrapnel hit one cadet in the calf, another in the heel,. and the round bounced up and caught the 3rd one in the hamstring (back of the leg). it only broke the skin (barely) on the one hit in the calf. One is on crutches and several are crying PTSD.
No idea what the fuck they're going to do on the range or when/if they hit the street. Bunch of pussies and crybabies.
I was teaching when it happened and you could tell by his look it was a negligent discharge.
No one ever mentioned any threat by him till after the discharge.
I jerked his ass up, told the cadets to make the notifications and call EMS, took him out of the room and made sure the weapon was safe.
COM PD got everyone out of the room, then Texas City [police] shows up and sends them all outside [the building] before they even got statements, so you know what happened then. Instead of one person who heard a threat, now we have several.
It was a clusterfuck!
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