ROSAMOND, Calif. — The half brother of Robert Fuller, a young black man who was found hanging from a tree in Palmdale last week, was fatally shot by Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies in Kern County on Wednesday afternoon, according to law enforcement sources and an attorney for the family.
Details about the shooting were unclear. Surveillance video of the incident posted by a community news platform showed multiple vehicles trailing a dark SUV into a housing complex parking lot. Voices repeatedly shouted, “Hands up!” before gunfire erupted. The operator of the Rosamond Community Watchdog shared images from the scene, including a body lying near a curb by the stucco housing complex.
The attorney for the family, Jamon Hicks, said Terron Jammal Boone was fatally shot by deputies and asked that the public respect the family’s privacy at this time.
Boone had been charged Tuesday by Los Angeles County prosecutors with false imprisonment, criminal threats, domestic violence and assault, according to court records.
Lt. Robert Westphal of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department told reporters at the scene that deputies were searching for a kidnapping suspect and located him in Rosamond. When deputies tried to pull his car over, the man opened fire on the deputies, who returned fire.
The shooting occurred about 4:39 p.m. in the 3400 block of 15th Street West in Rosamond.
Law enforcement sources said a woman in the car was also shot.
Siara Anderson was on the balcony of an apartment building, adjacent to the parking lot where Boone was shot, when she heard four or five gunshots early Wednesday evening. Anderson saw a man slumped in the passenger seat of a blue sport utility vehicle, clearly dead.
Law enforcement officers, in plainclothes but wearing bulletproof vests, were at the scene, she said, along with about five unmarked police cars.
Fuller was discovered hanging from a tree in a Palmdale park last week, and the initial cause of death was listed as suicide. But after protests, sheriff’s officials said they would do a full investigation, with assistance from the FBI and state attorney general.
Thousands protested last weekend at the park, with some describing racial incidents in the Antelope Valley and raising concerns over whether Fuller was lynched.
“This is really crazy to all of us,” Fuller’s sister Diamond Alexander said. “We want to find out the truth of what really happened. Everything that they’ve been telling us has not been right.
“To be here, staring at this tree, it don’t make no sense,” Alexander added. “My brother was not suicidal. My brother was a survivor.”
Fuller’s family and friends described him as a peacemaker, a street-smart man with shoulder-length dreadlocks and a bright smile who loved music, anime and video games and mostly stayed to himself. Days before he died, he attended a Black Lives Matter protest.
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