A St. Louis mother is demanding answers for a photo that depicts an officer holding onto her son’s arm, and smirking with a thumbs up as he lies dead in his home.
Rare reports the photo of 28-year-old Omar Rahman and the police officer recently surfaced and is under investigation, although the North County Cooperative, the precinct that responded to the call back on August 8th and who’s officer’s are in the photograph say “no wrongdoing has been determined at this time.”
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Medical examiners determined Rahman died of an accidental drug overdose and was found in his Pine Lawn Missouri home on August 8th. The timestamp on the photo bears the same date. Since that date, his mother, Kim Stanton has heard little from police.
Stanton is rightfully horrified at the nature of the photo of the officer and her son’s body. She was asked if she believed there was a good reason behind the photo and replied, “No, because when they come to a call, they’re supposed to be there to help and protect, not doing what he was doing with thumbs up and a smirk on his face.”
Stanton’s attorney Antonio Romanucci agrees with Stanton and calls the photo “hideous.”
“I have seen thousands and thousands of forensic photographs, I have never seen a staged photograph of an officer next to a deceased body,” Romanucci told KMOV, the Missouri news station who published and reported on the found photo.
The Co-op is threatening to sue KMOV as it says the photo is stolen property and said in a statement, “NCPC does not believe it is appropriate to comment on a matter related to 2 open criminal investigations.”
Romanucci is demanding an investigation by another police force other than the Co-op.
This article first appeared on Womanista.com