Robert Fuller: officials vow investigation into California hanging death
The FBI and the California attorney general’s office will monitor the investigation into the hanging death of a Black man in the south of the state, in one of two cases that have resurfaced fears of lynchings during a time of racial tensions and mistrust of law enforcement in the country.
Robert Fuller, 24, was found hanging from a tree near Palmdale city hall in the early hours of 10 June. The county medical examiner labeled the preliminary cause of death as suicide pending a full autopsy. But the office deferred that decision after community members demanded a full investigation in a contentious news briefing late last week.
Over the weekend, hundreds took to the streets in protest, demanding attention for the case.
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“Robert Fuller was a young man in the prime of his life and his death is obviously very painful to many people,” said the Los Angeles county sheriff, Alex Villanueva, in a news conference on Monday. “It is in our interest to make sure we leave no rock unturned.”
The attorney general’s office will provide a monitor to review the sheriff department’s investigation, and the FBI’s civil rights division will also be keeping an eye on the findings, he said.
At the same Monday news briefing where Villanueva announced the involvement of the attorney general’s office, a Los Angeles county sheriff homicide captain, Kent Wagner, said that nothing was found at the scene “other than the rope that was used to hang the victim and the contents of his pockets as well as a backpack that he was wearing”.
The chief county medical examiner, Jonathan Lucas, defended his office’s initial finding, stating that “initially, there wasn’t any evidence or information that led us to believe that there was anything other than a suicide”.
“We felt better that we should look into it a little bit more carefully and deeply, just considering all the circumstances at play,” Lucas said.
At Saturday’s rally, Fuller’s sister, Diamond Alexander, told the crowd that “everything that they’ve been telling us has not been right”. “My brother was not suicidal,” she said. “My brother was a survivor.”
Meanwhile, the family members of a 38-year-old man who died on 31 May in Victorville, California, are also raising questions about officials’ account of their relative’s death. Malcolm Harsch’s body was discovered 50 miles from Palmdale, hanging from a tree in front of the Victorville public library in San Bernardino county.
Harsch had been living at a nearby homeless encampment, the San Bernardino county sheriff’s department said in a statement. Encampment residents had cut him down and were rendering aid to him when department personnel arrived. The sheriff’s department “did not recover any evidence to suggest foul play” at the scene.
Harsch’s family feared that the coroner’s office, which did not conduct an autopsy until 12 days after his body was discovered, will dismiss his death as a suicide.
“Malcom Harsch was 6 ft 3in tall and was found with blood on his shirt, hung by a USB cord, just 4 hours after he was reportedly stopped by a Victorville police officer!” Harsch’s sister Harmonie Harsch posted on Facebook. “THIS WAS NOT A SUICIDE!”
A petition being circulated by the family notes that “during such a heightened time with the Black Lives Matter movement, there is reason to believe that Malcolm’s death was a lynching”.
“As most of us are in Ohio, we weren’t able to physically go to the location where he was found dead but did speak to a few people who were around at the time of the discovery,” the family said in a statement. “We were told that his 6 foot 3 inches long body wasn’t even dangling from the tree.”
The San Bernardino sheriff’s department is also “working in cooperation” with the attorney general’s office, according to the department.
Southern California has had a long documented problem with white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups, and recently has been experiencing a rash of anti-Black incidents among its youth. Palmdale was the subject of a lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice’s civil rights unit for purportedly targeting Black people with “discriminatory enforcement” of the federal housing choice voucher program.
Villanueva said his office was listening and hearing the concerns of the community.
