Officers removed Grant and several other men suspected of fighting from the train and detained them on the platform. Grant and another man ran back onto the train after being detained, but Grant voluntarily returned to the platform when officer Tony Pirone grabbed the other man and dragged him from the train

Pirone confirmed with the train operator that the men detained were involved in the fight.

BART police had been on edge before the shooting because two guns had been recovered in separate incidents along the rail line over the previous hour.[16] Immediately before he arrived at Fruitvale, Mehserle was involved in an incident at the West Oakland station where a teenage boy with a semi-automatic pistol had fled from police and jumped off the station platform, breaking several bones.[2]

Officer Pirone said he told Grant “Stop resisting, you’re under arrest, put your hands behind your back.” At that time Pirone said he heard Mehserle say, “Put your hands behind your back, stop resisting, stop resisting, put your hands behind your back.” Then Mehserle said, “I’m going to taze him, I’m going to taze him. I can’t get his arms. He won’t give me his arms. His hands are going for his waistband.” Then Mehserle popped up and said, “Tony, Tony, get away, back up, back up.”

Pirone did not know if Grant was armed. Mehserle had fear in his voice. Pirone had never heard Mehserle’s voice with that tone. Mehserle sounded afraid.[8]

The motion also states that the man sitting next to Grant also told police he heard Mehserle say “I’m going to taze him.”[8]

Mehserle then stood up, unholstered his gun, a SIG P226,[3] and fired a shot into Grant’s back.[21] Immediately after the shooting, Mehserle appeared surprised and raised his hands to his face; according to Michael Rains, Mehserle’s criminal defense attorney, several eyewitnesses described Mehserle as looking stunned.[3][22]

There is disagreement of when, or if, Grant was handcuffed before he was shot. The day after the shooting, BART spokesman Jim Allison said that Grant was not restrained when he was shot.[4] Court filings by the district attorney’s office say that Grant’s hands were behind his back and that he was “restrained and unarmed” but do not say he was handcuffed

Oscar Juliuss Grant III, (February 27, 1986[26] – January 1, 2009), was the father of a 4-year-old daughter and lived in Hayward, California.[15] Grant had worked as a butcher at Farmer Joe’s Marketplace in Oakland’s Dimond District after previous jobs at several Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets.[9] He attended both San Lorenzo and Mount Eden High Schools in Hayward until the 10th grade and eventually earned his GED.[9]

Grant had a prior police record but the attorney for Grant’s family, John Burris, argued it was “irrelevant to the BART shooting because Mehserle wasn’t aware of it when he opened fire”.[9][27] Previously Grant had been convicted of drug dealing and, in 2007, was sentenced to sixteen months in state prison for fleeing “from a traffic stop while armed with a loaded pistol”.[9] At that incident, near his Hayward home, San Leandro police shot him with a Taser to subdue him after he threw the pistol into the air and ran.[9] Grant was released from prison September 23, and according to Burris, had been doing well in recent months.

Mary Ratcliff, editor
SF Bay View

The man was murdered in cold blood. It appears the officers involved were trying to goad the man into a conflict and when they failed to do that, they shot him.

Very troubling.

just watch the cops reaction at 1:32.

he’s shocked. he looks at the other cops and raises his hands to his head,,just like the lawyer did after watching the shooting, and saying “why did take his gun out?”.

2:32
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKy-WSZMklc&feature=related

there were witnesses that heard a cop say “oh my god”. i bet it was the cop that did the shooting.

tragic accident.