Ex-Iowa Hawkeye wide receiver Ivory Webb stands trial for voluntary manslaughter and assault with a firearm in California this week. Webb, in his job as a San Bernardino County sheriff's deputy, shot an Air Force veteran 3 times last summer following a high speed chase. The shooting shocked many who watched an amateur video of the incident. Reports from the LA Times (reg needed) and the DailyBulletin.com document the trial which began after delays in San Bernadino.
The Wizard of Odds carried the video last year and these comments on Webb's background (and recently here):
Ivory Webb was tied for third in pass receptions with 16 for the 1981-82 Iowa team that snapped a string of 19 straight winless seasons and reached the 1982 Rose Bowl, where it lost to Washington, 28-0.
Webb transferred to Iowa in 1980 from Long Beach (Calif.) Junior College. He is a Long Beach native. The 1981 Iowa football media guide said his major was broadcasting.
Webb's father is a police chief in Compton CA. Interview with Webb's family here at PE.com.
The wife of a sheriff's deputy videotaped shooting an unarmed Air Force airman broke her silence Thursday, saying her husband is a caring man who has been unfairly and prematurely judged. "What he is charged with is not who he is," A.J. Webb said...
Webb, 45, the son of a retired Compton police chief, is the first peace officer in San Bernardino County to be charged in connection with an on-duty shooting. A resident videotaped the shooting, which received national attention.
The trial begins, from the Times:
The man who led a San Bernardino County sheriff's deputy on a high-speed chase before crashing a borrowed Corvette in Chino last year testified Wednesday that his passenger was following the deputy's orders to "get up" off the ground and had his hands in plain view when the officer shot him three times.
The former deputy, Ivory John Webb Jr., is on trial in San Bernardino County Superior Court in the shooting of the off-duty Air Force airman, Elio Carrion, who survived. The incident was recorded on video by a bystander, providing the evidence on which much of the trial has focused.
The Corvette's driver, Carrion's high school friend Luis Escobedo, testified Wednesday that neither he nor Carrion had made threatening moves and had assured the officer that they were unarmed.
During cross-examination, however, Webb's attorney questioned how Escobedo could have tracked what was happening in the darkness.
Webb, 46, is charged with attempted voluntary manslaughter and assault with a firearm. Prosecutor R. Lewis Cope has argued that the shooting was unprovoked and unnecessary.
(More from the Times after the jump)
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