In his recent column N&R ed page editor Allen Johnson takes a parting shot at Greensboro Police Chief Ken Miller over the March police shooting of a knife-wielding citizen.
Probably due to Johnson’s column, Guilford County Assistant District Attorney Ron Neumann offers up some details on the incident, in which Officer T.D. Bloch shot Chieu Di Vo, 47, a Vietnamese immigrant who approached him with a knife and ignored his orders to stop. While this does not constitute an official release of investigative reports, the details—as least as reported by the N&R —appear to absolve Officer Bloch.
The N&R also reported the medical examiner released the autopsy report on Chieu and —reader alert—spared few details:
Chieu-di Vo’s body arrived at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner dressed in a dark blue hospital gown and wrapped in a blanket.
Numerous tubes and bandages remained attached to her body, according to the autopsy report. She had small incisions where catheters protruded from the skin of her groin, chest, neck and left wrist.
Surgeons had stapled her stomach, sutured her intestines and removed parts of her bowel.
“Fingernails and toenails are covered with flaking pink-red polish,” the autopsy report states.
Joe Gamm’s police reporting has come under fire in recent weeks for letting assertions stand for facts. This time he overdoes it, though I honestly suspect he’s just trying to fill the word count. All I know is if the N&R was trying to secure some semblance of dignity for this woman, they sure blew it.