DA, Police and Mayor won't tell mother why her son was shot!

Heineken Helen

Is this normal in the states? Her son died on Monday and she still hasn't been given ANY idea of what happened :( The police and the DA haven't even returned her calls.

The officer-involved shooting death in Silverton Monday of Andrew Hanlon is getting big play in the Irish print and broadcast media.

Hanlon was shot by Officer Tony Gonzalez, who was responding to a report of a burglary in progress at Oak and Mill streets. The case is under review by the Marion County district attorney's office.

Few details of the shooting of the shooting have emerged. Hanlon died of gunshot wounds. Investigators have not said whether Hanlon was armed, nor in what role he encountered Officer Gonzalez, as suspect or passerby. Family members said Hanlon had been struggling with mental health issues over the last six months, and that police knew Hanlon and knew of his problems.

Relatives had held extensive interviews with the media, both here and in Ireland. Hanlon moved to Silverton a year ago at the urging of his sister Melanie Heise and her husband Nathan Heise. They described a young man who suffered from an upbringing in a broken home and who perhaps could find happier times with a visit to the states.

The Irish Times had this story about the shooting. Melanie Heise gave this radio interview and this interview to the evening Herald newspaper.

The most haunting story in the Irish media was also a radio interview, this one with Dorothea Hanlon, Andrew Hanlon's mother. The radio format provides a transparent emotional experience with an anguished mother.

In the interview, Dorothea Hanlon describes watching crime scene video on television. On the screen is a street in a foreign country, with markers highlighting the location of spent shells and and a spotwhere her son died.

She has emailed and called the Marion County district attorney, the Silverton police and the mayor. She feels stonewalled for a procedure that many Americans now take for granted.

Police shootings quickly disappear into an impenetrable investigation, then a secret grand jury and quite often, a ruling that a police shooting was justified. The decision really only looks at a slender part of the sequence of events - what was happening at the exact moment the shots were fired. What led to the sequence of events is left for friends and relatives of both the deceased and the officer to deal with on their own.

She did have very kind words for Silverton Mayor Ken Hector, who called her back. She said Hector was polite, a nice man, though he couldn't really tell her anything either.

As the interview goes along, Dorothea Hanlon readily admits that son Andrew grew up in a broken family. She split with his father years ago. What is so unusual about that anymore, she asks? The father lives in Texas. He has not seen his son in 12 years but is now in Silverton, she said.

Andrew was living with her in the south of France when Melanie and Nathan Heise came to visit. At their urging, she agreed that a trip to the states would be good for him. The trip home for him was nothing she had ever imagined.

Now, she faces a 10,000 Euro mortuary and airline bill to bring her boy home