Eddie Terrell Parker, right, and Michael Corey Jenkins, center.Photo:AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis
AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis
The victims of six Mississippi ex-law enforcement officers whocalled themselves the “Goon Squad"are speaking out about the torture, abuse and racial taunts they endured that led to the officers' criminal convictions.
In an interview with PEOPLE, Michael Jenkins, 32, and Eddie Terrell Parker, 35, who are Black, say they are still suffering from shock after their two-hour ordeal with the White officers, who broke into the home they were staying in Braxton on Jan. 24.
“I thought I was dead,” Jenkins tells PEOPLE. “I was asking Eddie when they shot me. I said, ‘Bro, I’m dying.’ Yeah, I thought I was dead. They killed me, but I didn’t die, brother. They killed me, I just did not die.”
Parker, who describes the attack as a “catastrophe” as well as “brutal,” says the possibility of getting killed was “the only thing that was on my mind at the end.”
“We were complying with everything they wanted," he says. “It wasn’t nothing that we could do to stop it. I mean, it was bound to happen. At the end, I did say we were about to die.”
Brett McAlpin, Hunter Elward, Daniel Opdyke, Jeffrey Middleton, Christian Dedmon, Joshua Hartfield.AP Photo
AP Photo
Jenkins and Parker, who have filed a $400-million-dollar federal civil right lawsuit against the officers, were staying at the home of Parker’s childhood friend and helping with her care at the time of the incident, theAssociated Pressreported.
According to the federal complaint, Rankin County Sheriff’s officers Christian Dedmon, Hunter Elward, Brett McAlpin, Jeffrey Middleton and Daniel Opdyke and Richland Police Department officer Joshua Hartfield went to the home after Brett McAlpin, the chief investigator with the Rankin County Sheriff’s Office, got a call from his White neighbor who complained about two Black men “staying at the property.”
The officers broke into the home, tasered and handcuffed the two men and berated them with racist slurs. They accused them of “taking advantage of the White woman who owned the house,” according to the complaint.
One of the officers grabbed a sex toy from one of the bedrooms and mounted it on top of a BB gun and “forced the dildo into the mount of [Parker], and attempted to force the dildo into the mouth of [Jenkins],” the complaint states.
Michael Corey Jenkins.AP Photo/HG Biggs
AP Photo/HG Biggs
The men were also subjected to multiple tasings, were beaten and waterboarded and forced to take showers together “to wash away evidence of abuse.”
The officers then concocted a “false cover story” to cover up the crime.
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On Monday, the officers pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit obstruction of justice, among other state charges. In addition, the six men pleaded guilty to federal charges last week stemming from the same incident.
Eddie Terrell Parker, left, speaks with reporters following a hearing where six former Mississippi law officers pleaded guilty to state charges at the Rankin County Circuit Court in Brandon, Miss., Monday, Aug. 14, 2023.AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis
“I feel a small relief in a small way,” says Parker. “I feel a bit of pressure off of me. There’s no relief that’s going to make it where I’m not the way I was before all this. I’m still constantly waking up, looking around, and not being able to sleep. It’s a day-to-day challenge, trying to not make every day about that. I’m still in survival mode.”
Jenkins says he felt “great” when the officers enter their guilty pleas. Jenkins' mother, Mary, says she feels that her son and Parker have been “vindicated.”
“Seeing them come into court in shackles made me feel better about the situation,” she tells PEOPLE. “But right now, this is the first step. I would like to see what happened to Michael and Terrell change the mindset of people here in Mississippi. But I don’t expect that to happen. Although, I would like for it to happen.”
Her son, she says, is still suffering.
“My son has night sweats,” she says. “How could you sleep at night when you have been so traumatized? He will never be the same. He will never be ‘fine.’ He may be better, but the old Michael will never be the same. And the old Terrell will never be the same.”
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source: people.com
