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Man wronged in past by police saves officer from burning car
By CLAUDIA LAUER
ASSOCIATED PRESS |
JUN 22, 2020 AT 9:14 PM
Daylan McLee, left and son Avian, 13, stand on the sidewalk in front of their home in Uniontown, Pa., Monday, June 22, 2020. On Sunday McLee helped pull Uniontown Police Officer Jay Hanley from his burning patrol car following a collision. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
Daylan McLee, left and son Avian, 13, stand on the sidewalk in front of their home in Uniontown, Pa., Monday, June 22, 2020. On Sunday McLee helped pull Uniontown Police Officer Jay Hanley from his burning patrol car following a collision. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar) (Gene J. Puskar/AP)
There was a boom, then the house shook. Daylan McLee thought for a minute it might have been a small earthquake until a relative came running inside to say there had been a car crash involving a police cruiser outside the apartment in Uniontown, Pennsylvania.
McLee ran outside and pulled an officer from the mangled patrol car as flames began to spread into the cabin. Police officials and others have credited McLee with saving the officer's life after the Sunday evening crash.
“I don’t know what came across me, but I ripped the door open and just pulled him to safety across the street,” McLee said Monday.
Protests over police brutality following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis that have gripped the nation for weeks have laid bare tensions between police and the communities they serve, exposing grave mistrust by civilians, and frustration by law enforcement officers who say they are being painted with too broad a brush. But for McLee, the issue broke through the larger questions on race and policing; it was about saving a life.
Uniontown Police Lt. Thomas Kolencik's voice cracked as he told WTAE-Pittsburgh at the scene Sunday that the department was thankful McLee was nearby when the crash happened.
“Daylan actually said, ‘I’m not going to let him die,’” Kolencik told the TV station. “There’s just no words to describe, you know.”
Several of Officer Jay Hanley's relatives had thanked McLee on social media Sunday and Monday, noting the officer was undergoing surgery after the crash for a serious leg injury.
McLee said Hanley's sister had called to thank him, along with a handful of officers and even the police chief.
The 31-year-old said it wasn't a complicated decision to help another human being. But even some of his close friends wondered if he hesitated because of his previous interactions with a few law enforcement officers.
“No. There is value in every human life. We are all children of God and I can’t imagine just watching anyone burn,” he said. “No matter what other people have done to me, or other officers, I thought, ‘this guy deserves to make it home safely to his family.’”
McLee filed a lawsuit in late 2018 against four Pennsylvania State Police troopers for wrongful arrest after he spent a year in jail related to a March 2016 fight outside an American Legion bar.
McLee had rushed to the bar in Dunbar, Pennsylvania, after his sister called saying she needed a ride home because she had been drinking and a fight had broken out. When McLee arrived, he disarmed a man who was standing in the parking lot with a gun and threw the weapon aside.
At least one trooper fired shots at McLee as he fled. The trooper said McLee pointed a weapon at him twice, but security footage showed McLee disarming the man, discarding the gun quickly and fleeing when shots were fired.
McLee, a Black man with tattoos visible on his neck and arms and twisted dreads that reach below his chin, spent a year in jail before a jury acquitted him on the charges after reviewing the video. That was a year away from his children, and a year away from his mother, who was ill at the time. She passed away last year.
McLee had another run-in with officers a few months ago, when he ran from a porch gathering after officers in plain clothes and vests approached with guns drawn. He said they did not announce they were officers, and he stopped running and put his hands behind his head when they yelled they were police.
He said he was charged with fleeing and resisting arrest, but said during that arrest an officer kicked him in the face through a fence, splitting his lip. He said the use of force was caught on a security camera and he plans to fight the charges.
But McLee stressed forgiveness, saying he couldn't blame every police officer for bad interactions he had with any others.
“We need to work on our humanity... that’s the main problem of this world. We’re stuck on how to get up or to get even, and that is not how I was raised to be. You learn, you live, you move on and I was always taught to forgive big,” he said. “You can’t base every day of your life off of one interaction you have with one individual.”
McLee's attorney Alec Wright said he isn't surprised his client acted quickly and without being jaded.
“Over the course of his life, Daylan McLee has had multiple, unjustified encounters with police officers just because of the color of his skin,” Wright said. “Those encounters make him the perfect candidate to hate and resent the police. But, that is not Daylan... The answer is not to disregard human life; the answer is to accept it for all that it is. That is Daylan.”
Police said the officer McLee helped rescue was flown to a hospital in West Virginia where he underwent surgery and is recovering. McLee said he realized after the crash that he had spoken to Hanley maybe three weeks earlier when the officer was on patrol.
“I realized after, that I’d seen him. He speaks to people; he says hello; he isn’t an officer that harasses anybody. He commented to me about the heat was coming for us,” he said.
McLee has a 13-year-old son, Avian, who he is trying to teach not to judge anyone for the color of their skin, for the job they hold or for what other people might say about them, but to instead look at people as individuals.
“Some people may think I look intimidating... and I can’t hate the trooper who shot at me for what he doesn’t know,” McLee said.
“I don’t want to be called a hero. I just want to be known as an individual who is an upstanding man. No matter... what or where, just an upstanding person,” he added. “And I hope (that trooper) sees this and knows he’s forgiven.”
Uniontown police would not comment Monday on the crash or McLee’s actions, saying questions should be directed to Pennsylvania State Police who are investigating the crash. Phone calls and emails to a Troop B spokesman were not returned.
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John Russell would have laid down the law
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and meanwhile in chicago CHICAGO (CBS) — After more than 100 people were shot in Chicago this weekend, 13 of them fatally, Chicago Police Supt. David Brown doubled down on his stance that violent felons are not being held in jail long enough, and not being watched properly when they are released on home monitoring.
“On the heels of Father’s Day, I come to you again with obviously a high level of frustration and disappointment,” Brown said Monday afternoon.
According to Chicago police and data collected by CBS 2, at least 102 people were shot from 5 p.m. Friday through 5 a.m. Monday, including 12 children. At least 13 people were killed, including at least five children.
The children who were slain this weekend included 3-year-old Mekhi James, who was shot in the back while riding in a car with his stepfather in the Austin neighborhood on Saturday; 13-year-old Amaria Jones was struck by gunfire while inside her house Saturday night in the Austin neighborhood; two boys — ages 16 and 17 — who were gunned down as they were walking home from buying candy in the South Chicago neighborhood; and a 15-year-old boy who was shot in the leg, chest, and abdomen in a drive-by shooting early Monday in the Austin neighborhood (a 16-year-old boy also was wounded in that shooting, but survived).
“Children in Chicago should not have to worry about walking just blocks from home to buy candy, and never returning,” Brown said.
The superintendent defended his department’s preparations for the weekend’s violence, and officers’ work to respond to the bloodshed, repeating a claim he made Sunday that too many violent felons are released on home monitoring when they’re arrested for a new crime, but then are not actually monitored.
“Our cops are working hard. There are too many violent offenders not in jail, or on electronic monitoring, which no one is really monitoring,” Brown said. “We need violent felons to stay in jail longer, and we need improvement in home monitoring.”
Brown said police officers made 43 gun-related arrests over the weekend, and recovered 77 firearms.
According to published reports, the weekend’s total number of shootings was the most in one weekend in Chicago since 2012. Asked how the Chicago Police Department might change its strategies in the wake of the historic bloodshed, Brown said, “We’re constantly adjusting, readjusting, redeploying our resources based on real-time crime data.”
“But at the end of the day, our endgame strategy is arresting violent felons, and if violent felons don’t spend enough time in jail, we need more cooperation and collaboration from other parts of the system, and we expect that we will collaborate,” he said.
At a separate event Monday afternoon, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said she still has confidence in Brown’s leadership at CPD.
“I can’t even believe that someone would even ask the question. Superintendent Brown has been here for eight weeks. He is a tremendous leader. He has walked into a very difficult circumstance that other police superintendents and chiefs are facing across the country. Policing in the time of COVID is not easy, and no one should underestimate the level of challenges that are there,” she said. “I think David Brown is a great leader. I think he’s dug in, he really understands the department well, and I think he’s going to end up being one of the best superintendents in the history of the department.”
Meantime, the superintendent noted that officers have been working 12-hour shifts for most of the past three weeks.
“They’re human and they’re tired. They are very professional, and I am so proud of the work that they’re putting in, given the circumstances that they’re in,” he said.
First Deputy Supt. Anthony Riccio said the department’s command staff visited all 22 districts this weekend to talk to officers “and reassure them that we appreciate the hard work that they’re doing, and the sacrifices that they’ve been making.”
“Nobody is happy about the level of violence, obviously, and we’re going to continue to work to address that violence, and continue to work to try to bring safety to a lot of these communities where we’re seeing all the shootings and murders,” Riccio said. “The level of violence is completely unacceptable when you see a 3-year-old killed, a 13-year-old killed. It’s absolutely not acceptable, and we’re going to continue to address it.”
However, Brown denied that CPD was pointing the finger at others in the justice system to avoid blame for gun violence in Chicago.
“I’m not into finger-pointing, I’m into collaboration,” he said. “I think we are more likely to move the needle if we collaborate and not point the finger.”
Brown has said he would like to see Chicago get its annual murder total below 300, a level it hasn’t seen since the 1950s, but the city already is on pace to surpass 300 murders before the end of June.
Asked if he’s underestimated just how firmly entrenched Chicago’s gun violence has become, Brown acknowledged “There’s no Easy Button to cutting murders down to 300 or below,” but said he’s still committed to that goal.
“If New York can do it, if LA can do it, there’s no reason why Chicago can’t do it, and we have to believe we can do it,” he added. “I believe in Chicago, and I believe we can achieve above and beyond what we are currently doing.”
“If I thought it was an easy job, I wouldn’t have applied. Police officers have pretty much the same sentiment. This is the life we chose. It’s never easy,” he added.
Cue the Calm - Sho