Posted on 06/29/2007 5:43:38 AM PDT by Candor7
EDITOR'S NOTE: The following details the police interview of Gregory Floyd Sr., the man who shot Liko Kenney, Cpl. Bruce McKay's killer. Yesterday's paper featured police interviews with the two witnesses to the shootings, Gregory Floyd Jr. and Caleb Macaulay.
In an interview with Sgt. Charles West of the New Hampshire State Police on the night of the shootings, Gregory Floyd Sr., 49, who was the passer-by who came upon the scene, took Cpl. Bruce McKay's gun and shot and killed Liko Kenney, Floyd shares his version of the accounts of that night.
The interview begins with the trooper informing Floyd, who is an ex-Marine and a convicted felon, that he is not under arrest and that he is free to leave at any point he chooses. He signs a Miranda form and is told that his son, who witnessed the shooting of Kenney by his father, is also at the state police barracks.
"I just don't want him to get too upset," Floyd said of his son, "because you know, he's never saw no violence or nothing."
Floyd is advised of his rights and as West reads him his rights, he says, "Yah, can we just cut, cut to the chase, and I'll just initial em all because I know what they all mean."
He says he does not want a lawyer. "I don't think I've done anything wrong."
West says, "I don't want to rush through this, you understand what's going on here?"
"Yah, yah, I understand," Floyd says.
A few minutes into the interview - which is 80 pages in length - Floyd says to West, "I don't think you guys are gonna charge me with, with murder or, or anything like that, because bas-, basically, uh, I was defending someone that was helpless."
"OK, well let me start from this point here," West says to him. "I, I have a general idea of what happened. Why don't you in your own words um start, tell me the story what, what had happened?"
Floyd says he and his son, who is 18, had headed from their home on Hummingbird Lane in Easton to Mac's that Friday evening to buy some groceries.
West asks Floyd if it was still light out, and he responds, "It was pretty light until there was 150 troopers there."
Floyd says his son and he bought their groceries at Macs and were headed home, with his son driving, when they saw a police car and another vehicle, "bumper to ass, guess would be the best way to put it."
The pair spotted the two cars on Route 116. "It's not like a normal stop, where you see a car pulled over and a cruiser behind it kicked off a little," Floyd says. He says McKay's police SUV was "pushing the guy up against the bulldozer, uh you know, with his car."
Floyd is asked to draw a map of what he saw. He said he was curious about the position of the cars, and how the police cruiser had Kenney's car pushed up against a bulldozer so it couldn't move. He said he was looking at the scene when he heard a gunshot.
"I knew that it had come from over, you know by the police and all because he came running by, holding his side like this and blood was uh, you know, coming out in spasms.
"There were two guys talking there and they said he's a local policeman and him and this guy have some kind of grievance or ..." Floyd says. "Something's going on."
Floyd continues, "I was sitting right, right there the whole time because they were in the middle of the road, not on either side like I told you, they were in the middle ..."
"So (McKay) runs across the road, the oh, the policeman does," Floyd says. "And they come behind him in a car and run him over, OK, and they back up and you know hit him again and the gun comes flying out the window, now I believe that that gun was still the perpetrator's, I'm not positive."
Floyd goes on, "I picked it up and I leaned, leaned in to see what this guy was doing and you know, pressed my elbow into the passenger's throat to hold him in place and the other guy was trying to jack around then you know into the tenth millimeter ..."
He said he had seen the gun he picked up in Kenney's hand. Floyd said before he approached the car, the Kenney car had run McKay over a second time. "I said uh-huh, there's a chance to, to save somebody."
Floyd said he got out of his car and told his son to run to McKay's cruiser and say "dispatch" and tell them that the officer needed help, and the location.
Floyd said he checked to make sure the gun he found was loaded and ready to shoot and said he saw Kenney "trying with both hands to unjam his gun, uh, be- because, um, for some reason, uh, he'd get one bullet in the chamber but the second bullet behind it wouldn't let the slide shut but anyway while he was doing that, I just, I just shot him because ...."
Trooper West presses Floyd to determine if Floyd believed Kenney was attempting to reload to shoot him, and he said he did. "I wasn't gonna let him get, get that gun loaded, either," he says. He said he had pointed the gun at Caleb Macaulay's face to warn him not to mess with him during the scuffle. "I point the gun at his face and tell him to get out of the car and get on his knees and if he moves I'm gonna blow his, blow his face off."
Floyd said he then made sure he was in possession of both guns. He said he wasn't sure if he had shot Kenney once or twice, but said he could have put two bullets in Kenney's heart. "But I mean I, I wasn't thinking of killing nobody but, uh, I'm not going to sit there and watch an innocent man being run over time and again, time and again .... In my mind (Kenney) was trying to kill him," he said of what he witnessed happening to McKay.
As West continues to obtain information about Floyd's eyewitness account, he asks him if he heard either Kenney or Macaulay say anything. "I heard the passenger say, ‘I can't believe this, I can't believe this,' and you know, at that point, you know, I'm ordering him out, it's just too many damned guns around."
The officer asks Floyd if he knew either the police officer or the two young men in the car, and he says he did not know any of them. Floyd is asked about a comment he had made earlier about having witnessed shootings before. He said he was in the Marine Corps during Vietnam.
"I worked for the government in places and things you can't talk about," he says.
He is asked if he has a criminal record and says he does - for marijuana charges in Georgia that led to a felony conviction. "I made a mistake, plain and simple," he tells the officer.
At this point, West points out to Floyd that he has blood on his arm and asks him how it got there. "I took my shirt off and tried to uh make a tourniquet for the officer when he was trapped under the vehicle," he says. The interview was being taped the same night as the shootings, May 11.
There was one discrepancy in the way Floyd described one of the vehicles, and he points out that that could have occurred when about a half-dozen men moved the car "off the policeman" to try and save him.
Floyd expresses some concern about having shared his story at this point. "I'm worried because you know I know I'm a felon and I've taken a risk but I'm not gonna allow a man to be killed by being you know run over four or five times, I just, I'm just not made that way."
He is asked about the medications he takes and if he consumed any alcohol that day, to which he responds, "No, I don't drink."
As trooper West continues to question Floyd, he asks him how Kenney knew he was there. Floyd responds, "I was telling the driver to stop and he looked up once .... You know and I'm screaming either put it down or, or you're gonna die ... I'm saying put it down, leave it alone, you know you want to live, whatever, whatever come into my mind that I thought he might let it go ... and I wouldn't have to shoot him but ...."
"Now did he respond at all?" West asks.
"No he looked up at me one time but he kept jacking you know and ... as far as I, I'm concerned he was clearly a threat and had no remorse about running that police officer over with his car and you know trying to do it again, you know so why should I give him a chance, if he might shoot me, you know and I ..."
"Did you, did you feel threatened by him?" West asks Floyd.
"Oh yah, till I got that gun away," Floyd responds.
West then references an incident at Floyd's home in 1997, when a scuffle with a meter reader led to state police coming to Floyd's home, where he threatened three state police and was arrested for being a felon in possession of firearms. The case ended up being dismissed in court later, court records show.
West was one of the three state troopers who Floyd had threatened to give a third eye. West asks Floyd in the interview the night of the Kenney and McKay shootings about his use of firearms since that arrest, and he said he did some shooting on Prince Edward Island within the past year, and his wife owns a gun, but he does not.
Floyd, in the interview, refers to Macaulay and Kenney as "the bad guys," and "the bandits," several times.
A number of other witnesses' testimony and officer testimony also is part of the reports released this week.
According to the state Chief's Medical Examiner's Office, McKay died from five gunshot wounds. He also had numerous other injuries from being run over, including lacerations, broken bones, a fractured skull and more. His cause of death was ruled a homicide.
Kenney, the Chief Medical Examiner's Office ruled, died of two gunshot wounds, the manner of his death was also homicide. Toxicology results for Kenney revealed marijuana consumption, the autopsy showed. Have the Daily Headlines emailed to you within minutes of being posted.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Related Stories:
Interviews With Witnesses To Franconia Shootings Made Public June 27, 2007 Police cruiser video shows last moments before officer's death June 26, 2007 Cruiser Video Shows 2003 Confrontation Between Kenney And McKay June 22, 2007 Community Forms Group To Assist In Recovery May 30, 2007 Hundreds Mourn Liko Kenney May 21, 2007 Police Officer Bruce McKay Laid To Rest May 18, 2007 Hundreds Attend Wake For Officer May 17, 2007 Law Enforcement Officers Begin Arriving For Funeral May 16, 2007 Police Officer And Gunman Had A Stormy History May 15, 2007 Passer-By Killed Man To Protect Fallen Officer May 14, 2007 Franconia Police Officer And Citizen Fatally Shot May 12, 2007
In Franconia Shootings, Liko's Uncle Talks To Police June 28, 2007 In McKay Shooting, New documents give clue to passer-by's role June 26, 2007 Franconia Recovery Committee Conducting Survey On Tragedy June 23, 2007 Conflicting Images Emerge From Double Shooting May 14, 2007
IF the media got his age right, but that's a big if these days. They get so little correct.
But if he is only 49, he would have only been about 17 in '75 when the war ended with the NVA combined arms invasion of the south which had been starved of beans and bullets, not to mention fuel and spares by the DemonRat Congress.
Ground forces were withdrawn somewhat earlier. Most US ground forces were gone by mid '73. The NVA invaded the South, the second time, in spring of '75. The first time the ARVN, with US air support, held. Then Congress cut off funds, first for the use of US forces, then for aid to the RVN. The RVN government surrendered on May 1, '75.
Franconia is NOT Coos County... It is ihn Grafton.
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