An Alabama teenager was asleep in his childhood bedroom moments before a police S.W.A.T. team “rammed down” the front door of his family’s home and fatally shot him, according to a new federal lawsuit.
Randall Adjessom was left bleeding out in the hallway for more than four minutes during what was an unauthorized, “no-knock” raid by the Mobile Police Department before sunrise on Nov. 13, 2023, the lawsuit says.
The 16-year-old didn’t know it was the police when he was awoken by officers entering his home and breaking a living room window, according to a complaint filed Dec. 18.
He got out of bed, grabbed a gun and left his room “to protect his mother, grandmother, aunt, and sisters from the unknown intruders breaching his childhood home,” the complaint says.
When Adjessom rounded a corner and saw officers in the hallway, he instantly put his hands up and began to back away, toward his bedroom, according to the complaint.
Then one of the officers shot him four times, hitting him in the chest and torso, the complaint says.
Police body camera footage, which hasn’t been made public, shows Adjessom had his hands raised and that he didn’t pose a threat, according to his family’s legal counsel, who has reviewed the footage.
The purpose of the raid was a search for marijuana “purportedly possessed by Randall’s older brother,” who didn’t live there, the complaint says.
The officers didn’t have court authorization to search the home before dawn, according to the complaint. The raid was racially motivated, Grant & Eisenhofer, the law firm representing Adjessom’s family, said in a Dec. 23 news release.
