Having fired nine rounds, Canyon Boykin reloaded his gun as he approached the corner of an abandoned house.
The then-Columbus police officer cursed out a dozen times as his flashlight scanned the front lawn, his voice shaky. He found a puddle of blood belonging to the man he just shot.
Boykin had yet to learn that two bullets he fired struck Ricky Ball — who he chased across a field in dim light — in his right tricep and hip. Ball would be found nearby, his right arm ripped open and broken. He would die that night at Baptist Memorial Hospital-Golden Triangle.
As more officers arrived on scene, Boykin told them Ball had pointed a gun at him, according to his body camera footage from right after the incident. But no one else saw it happen. Nor was the shooting recorded on camera.
Boykin’s post-shooting body camera footage, reviewed by The Dispatch, is part of the evidence file of the widely-known Ricky Ball case, when Boykin, who is white, shot and killed Ball, who is black, after Ball ran from a traffic stop on Oct. 16, 2015. As of Saturday morning, most of the evidence has been posted by local District Attorney Scott Colom, who promised as much public access to the case file as possible, on his website.
Certain evidence, such as autopsy photos, is withheld from the public out of privacy concerns for Ball’s family, Colom said. Body camera footage, which may be graphic, is also not released, he said, but the public can view it from his office upon request.
Colom’s decision came after Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch dropped the manslaughter charge against Boykin and the case was dismissed with prejudice May 28, meaning Boykin cannot be legally charged in the case again. A grand jury indicted Boykin, who argued he fired in self-defense, in 2016, after Colom deferred the case to then-Attorney General Jim Hood’s office to investigate.
Fitch’s office concluded in a report that all evidence supported Boykin’s self-defense claim after an “exhaustive review.” The evidence included body camera footage, statements and depositions from officers on scene and investigators from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation (MBI), medical examination reports and witness interviews.
“The evidence shows that self-defense was the only conclusion consistent with the facts and the evidence,” the AG’s report reads.
However, the AG’s report made no mention of certain evidence in the case file that might contradict the state’s conclusions.
While it concluded Boykin did not know he was shooting at Ball that night, several witnesses detailed previous encounters, sometimes heated, between the two.
The report also omitted contradictory opinions from three forensic pathologists: Ball’s position when he was struck could suggest he was preparing to shoot or run away, depending on which pathologist is being referenced.
“(The Attorney General’s report) did not point to all the evidence,” Colom said. “As prosecutors, our job is to pursue the truth through the administration of justice. The public has to decide for themselves whether this was handled in a (just) manner.”
The night, retold
The report, largely relying on police officer depositions, chronicled the night leading up to Ball’s death.
After noticing a Mercury with a missing tag light, Boykin, along with his civilian fiancee Alisa Stanford, his patrol partner Johnny Max Branch and officer Yolanda Young, tailed the car for several blocks. They saw a black man, who was later identified as Ball, in the car.
The Mercury slowed down as it headed east on 14th Street North, but it didn’t stop. The passenger door opened. Ball jumped out. Boykin dashed after him. Boykin shot his Taser at Ball, who then stumbled to the ground.
Boykin thought the Taser prongs struck Ball, but the autopsy showed they didn’t.
Boykin recounted that, when Ball was on the ground, he saw a gun in Ball’s right hand. Boykin then yelled “gun, gun.”
Ball then stood up, ran about 20 yards into a nearby field and turned to his right, Boykin said in an interview with investigators. At that moment, Boykin said, he shot Ball because he said he felt threatened.
After being shot twice, Ball ran for a bit before falling down next to a nearby house. Until after the shooting, none of the three officers who initiated the traffic stop — Boykin, Branch and Young — activated their body cameras.
Several officers searched for Ball after Boykin lost sight of him, body camera footage shows. Upon hearing a cry for help, they approached Ball and found a gun, which was later identified as stolen from police officer Garrett Mittan, and a bag of marijuana.
After pulling Ball away from the gun, officers stripped away Ball’s clothes and handcuffed him as he gasped for air. When paramedics hauled Ball into an ambulance, one medic noticed Ball with no pulse, body camera footage shows.
Boykin was fired from the police department after the shooting for several policy violations, including not activating his camera during the incident.
The evidence in the case file dispels certain rumors, Colom said, including one claiming the gun was planted. Mittan’s body camera footage, activated while he drove to the scene, shows the gun was found before he was near Ball, Colom said. Others also activated theirs while searching for Ball.
“You can see that they find the gun when they find Mr. Ball,” he said.
Medical examination reports also show Ball was struck in the right arm and hip instead of in the back, as some have claimed.
Questions unanswered
While the prosecution report concludes that all evidence supported Boykin’s self-defense claim, questions remain.
The report states that no evidence suggested Boykin knew Ball when he shot him. However, several witness testimonies describe earlier encounters between them.
Dominique Cotton, Ball’s girlfriend at the time, told investigators she witnessed at least three run-ins. At OK Foods a week prior to Ball’s death, she said, Boykin attempted to arrest him.
“(Boykin) stopped and he told his partner, ‘That young effer thinks he’s above the law, I’m going to get him the next time I see him,'” Cotton said during an interview with MBI.
Georgeanna Harvill, a friend of Ball’s, corroborated Cotton’s account of the incident.
Aunnarae Leech, who knows Ball from the neighborhood, stated he overheard Boykin say “Man, I got something for you,” according to his interview with investigators.
Almost two months before the shooting, Boykin got in a car chase with Ball after seeing Ball riding with one of Boykin’s relatives, Laura Lee Hines.
“They was already looking for (Ball),” Hines told investigators. “They knew it was him.”
Apart from the car chase, Boykin acknowledged no other encounter with Ball in his deposition. The report only cited statements from Cotton and Leech with no mentions of other witness statements and concluded Boykin was not targeting Ball the night of the shooting.
The AG report also determined the wound on Ball’s right arm was only formed after he raised his arm almost parallel to the ground, which matches Boykin’s account of the incident. For reference, it cited a 2017 affidavit from Medical Examiner Dr. Lisa Funte and Dr. Charles Welti, Boykin’s expert witness. Both concluded the wound was consistent with Boykin’s claim.
But Funte offered a declaration in 2018 stating the evidence supported either of the two scenarios: Ball could be pointing a gun at Boykin, she said, but he could also be running. In June 2018, she further testified that the forensic conclusion reached earlier was not definitive.
“It could be turning, it could be running, it could be bending, anything,” she testified. “As long as (the bullet) comes in here in a straight line, ends up here, those two people can be doing anything.”
Also not included in the report was the state’s own expert witness Dr. Kris Sperry’s opinion on the wound. In August 2018, Sperry argued the wound suggested Ball couldn’t be raising his arm “more than a few degrees.”
Had Ball raised his arm, Sperry said, his upper arm would have been parallel to the ground. Instead, he said, the bullet entered the arm almost at a perpendicular angle.
The Dispatch made multiple inquiries to the AG’s Office, via phone and email, seeking explanation of why the report mentioned certain pieces of evidence while omitting others from the case file. Fitch’s communications director, Ray Coleman, responded with a brief email Saturday that did not directly answer those questions.
“Our team reviewed all the evidence in the case file and determined that there was not evidence to prosecute the case,” the email reads.
Colom said he hopes releasing the evidence for public review helps citizens make their own judgment about the case.
“I think it’s important that the truth comes out, and there’s transparency,” he said. “In this climate that we are in, there’s not a lot of trust in the criminal justice system. People have to make their decision for themselves about the reason for the dismissal.”
Editor’s Note: The Dispatch was provided copies of and reviewed officer body camera footage that shows Ricky Ball’s body after he was shot. Though it is described in this report, we opted not to release the videos publicly due to their graphic nature.
Yue Stella Yu was previously a reporter for The Dispatch.
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