Witnesses challenge Delray officer's account of teen shooting

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http://www.tcpalm.com/tcp/wptv/article/0,2547,TCP_1213_3711562,00.html

By John Cote; Sun-Sentinel
April 19, 2005

The Delray Beach police officer who killed Jerrod Miller as the teen drove down a narrow walkway said he aimed for the head and fired because he feared the boy would run down someone at a school dance.

"There were people directly in the path, a large group of people," rookie Officer Darren Cogoni said in a videotaped statement made hours after the shooting and played Monday during an inquest into Miller's death.

"Had I not thought that vehicle was going to strike those people, I would not have fired my weapon," Cogoni said in a separate sworn statement read in court. "I thought that the least amount of harm ... would be to fire my weapon at that point."

Those statements were at odds with other witnesses' accounts, said Rick Caplano, a Florida Department of Law Enforcement special agent who questioned Cogoni and headed the shooting investigation.

Caplano testified he interviewed 33 witnesses in the Feb. 26 shooting at the Delray Full Service Center but could identify no one in the path of the car or in a parking area where it was headed when Miller was killed by a single bullet to the back of his head.

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