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Four Charged With 'Modern-Day Lynching' of Two Black Men in US

  • The alleged killers claim they shot the victims after the two men climbed into the defendants' van to examine the gun.

    The alleged killers claim they shot the victims after the two men climbed into the defendants' van to examine the gun. | Photo: Reuters

Published 3 May 2018
Opinion

The dismembered bodies of Alize Ramo Smith and Jarron Moreland were recovered from a pond on the outskirts of Oklahoma city.

Three men have been charged with the "modern-day lynching" of two young Black men, whose dismembered remains were found in a pond near Oklahoma city in the United States.

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The mutilated bodies of 21-year-old Alize Ramo Smith and 22-year-old Jarron Moreland were dredged from a pond by police four days after they were reported missing on April 14 by relatives.

Johnny Shane Barker, 43; Kevin Garcia-Boettler, 22; his 16-year-old brother and their mother, Crystal Rachelle Boettler – all White – were charged on Thursday with murder; desecration of a human corpse; accessory to a crime; possession of a firearm, and unlawful removal of a corpse.

The court report says the victims had arranged to meet their attackers outside a local grocery story to make a gun purchase. The defendants claim they shot the victims after the two men climbed into the defendants' van to examine the gun.

"When (Moreland and Smith) entered the vehicle, the White men said they heard a gun being racked, so one of them fired four rounds," said Sgt. Jeremy Lewis of Moore Police Department.

The bodies of the victims were then transported in the van to meet Crystal's boyfriend, Barker, who helped dispose of the corpses and clean the inside of the vehicle.

Detectives found evidence of "cleaning products and a power washer around the vehicles; dried blood spatter on the ceiling of the van, and a bucket of water with a chainsaw bar inside and soaking in the water along with several jigsaw blades."

Moreland's uncle, Anthony Anderson, told KFOR News: "We're just glad that we get some closure and we found him… We needed this."

His mother, Kennetha Moreland, said: "It's like my whole world's been crumbled. I can't even have proper closure because my baby is disfigured and I can't even see him.

"The funeral home director man, when he got him, he said: 'You don't want to look at him because that's something that you'll never, ever, ever forget. I know he's in heaven, he's looking down and he knows that his mama got him.'"

Moreland's grandmother, Bobbie Moreland, described Jarron as a loving father who cared deeply for his son: "The boy is going to be lost without his daddy."

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