Part 2 of 2

Christian Hall’s parents learned that he had been shot and killed on an overpass of Interstate 80 in Monroe County in the late afternoon of Dec. 30, when troopers called them down to the local barracks.

They were distraught - and soon they were facing a barrage of questions from the Pennsylvania State Police and the coroner’s office about their son’s final days. But they were in shock and couldn’t talk yet, they said.

At one point a couple of days later, Hall’s parents said, they called the coroner’s office and were upset to learn that Hall’s body wouldn’t be released to them yet, because of the ongoing investigation.

“We have to think about two lives here,” an official at the coroner’s office said, according to Fe and Gareth Hall. “Christian’s and the officer who shot him.”

A spokesperson for the coroner’s office declined to comment.

Hall’s parents last talked to the state police on New Year’s Day, when Gareth Hall asked for his son’s phone. A trooper told him the department had a right to keep it, he said.

Hall’s parents said they’ve never received any of his belongings and haven’t heard from anyone with the state police since.

Gareth Hall said they would have cooperated with the investigation and answered questions after those overwhelming initial days.

“I was waiting,” Gareth Hall said. “Not a call.”

At the news conference in March, Michael Mancuso, the assistant district attorney, blamed the lack of communication on Hall’s parents.

“We had no request for information from them,” Mancuso said. “No direct request was made regarding the course of the investigation from them.”

Mancuso said that Hall had frequently carried the airsoft pellet gun and that investigators were told he robbed people with it.

Devon M. Jacob, one of the Hall family lawyers, saw the news conference as an attempt to prejudice anyone who might be scrutinizing the killing and denied that Hall had robbed anyone.

“None of that was relevant at all,” he said. “None of that was ever investigated. And none of that was proven.”

Fe Hall said she believes her son’s race played into the troopers’ decision to shoot. She and her husband said the pain of losing their son has been compounded by their treatment by state police and the District Attorney’s Office.

“I feel that Asians are generalized as the quiet ones, they’re not going to fight back,” Fe Hall said. “Is it possible that when they shot Christian they were looking at him as Chinese? He doesn’t matter. His family is not going to say anything. This is just going to go away quietly.”

Hall’s parents believe the district attorney wanted to protect the troopers involved. There was an incentive, they said, to paint their family as uncooperative and Hall as a criminal.

“The DA doesn’t have accountability to anybody,” Fe Hall said.

Benefit of the doubt

There’s an inherent conflict of interest when local prosecutors review the actions of local police, said David Rudovsky, senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Law School,

“Everybody recognizes with local police and a local DA, they are working together every day,” he said.

State Sen. Art Haywood, whose district includes part of Philadelphia, wants to change the law to require that an outside law enforcement agency investigates use-of-force cases in Pennsylvania, so families of victims and the public will have more faith in the findings.

His legislation would give the state Attorney General’s Office the power to review those investigations without a referral from the local district attorney if no charges are filed. Under the bill, the governor, key lawmakers and the attorney general would receive a detailed report about the investigation within seven days of a decision being made not to file charges.

Haywood said he started pushing for the changes after police killed Eric Garner in New York City and Michael Brown Jr. in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, and Antwon Rose II outside Pittsburgh in 2018.

So far the legislation hasn’t gotten much traction, but Haywood said he’s optimistic it can get passed in the future.

Hall’s case, and other police shootings of people with mental illness in Pennsylvania, shows why these investigations need to be independent, he said.

Hall’s parents support the change. Fe Hall said she believes her son was badly treated by the juvenile justice system, and she had hoped he would grow up and expose the abuses she believes he suffered.

She said she was uncomfortable with releasing the video of the shooting, but in doing so, she hopes Hall’s death can be the force for change that she wanted his life to be.

“He’s just a memory now,” she said. “But I just want something good to come out of it.”

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255, text HOME to 741741, or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional resources.

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