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We are all aware, from newspaper accounts and from firsthand information acquired in the courtroom, that Renato Hughes has been charged with the murder of childhood friends Christian Foster and Rashad Williams, although he was not the shooter.
However, we are equally aware that Shannon Edmonds admitted shooting to death both Foster and Williams. We are also aware that, to date, Shannon Edmonds has yet to be charged with any offense.
In that vein, we pose the below questions:
1) Is Shannon Edmonds to be charged with any offense?
2) When did it become lawful for any person to shoot in the back (multiple times) and kill, two fleeing, alleged robbers? [Record Bee, 1/29/2006]
3) Has it "yet been determined whether Edmonds shot the men [Foster and Williams] while they were inside the house, outside the house or both," since that was a factor that would help determine whether Edmonds would be prosecuted, according to an article which appeared in the Press Democrat, December 10, 2005?
4) Was the weapon (Browning automatic) used by Edmonds, legally obtained and registered?
5) What about the lighting conditions in the predawn hours of Dec. 8, 2005?
6) Is Edmonds an expert marksman?
7) What about the quantity of marijuana found and taken from the Edmonds residence?
8) What is the legal amount of medical marijuana in Lake County?
9) Did Edmonds have more than the legal limit of medical marijuana, and for what purpose? According to an investigative officer of the Clearlake Police Department, from testimony given and reported in the Record-Bee (1/19/2006), he (the officer) "call(ed) the five bags of marijuana found and a not quite-full zip bag of the substance 'an acceptable amount,' with an overall street value of less than $5,000."
He continued by stating, "It could have been for sale, but five bags of marijuana is secondary in my opinion. I was called out to a double homicide investigation. While I was investigating the double homicide, I confiscated the marijuana."
10) Why was there no investigation done with regard to the amount of marijuana found at the residence of Edmonds after the killing of these two young men? And, (11) Why wasn't the person identified by Edmonds, to a Clearlake Police Department officer, at the scene of the shooting, detained until the investigators could sort out “who did what to whom” and definitively determine if the person Edmonds identified was complicit in this incident, as Edmonds stated in front of the officer?
Finally, Lake County's chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) expects the fair dispensation of justice, in the Hughes matter, by the judicial system.
We believe, based on the above unanswered questions, that Edmonds and the unidentified fourth person at the scene of the crime on Dec. 8, 2005, should have been arrested and have to await their day in court.
Aqeela El-Amin Bakheit is president of the Lake County branch of the NAACP.
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