Details Sought In Shooting

Tuesday, December 12, 2006
By Carolyn Carlson
Journal Staff Writer

Black community leaders are urging anyone who has any information on how Jerome J. Hall ended up shot to death along North Fourth Street on Thanksgiving to come forward.
"We are asking (investigators) to be vigilant to find the culprit," Joe Powdrell, president of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said Friday.
More than two weeks after Hall, 42, was found dying on Fourth Street near Schulte NW, investigators are still trying to piece together how he ended up there. Hall was found suffering from gunshot wounds. He died on the way to the hospital.
Detectives with the Bernalillo County Sheriff's Department have not released many details about the shooting, except that Hall died of gunshot wounds.
"We have made some progress, but it has more to do with eliminating things," Lt. Gregg Marcantel, lead homicide detective for the Sheriff's Department, said Friday. "We do not have a clear suspect yet."
Powdrell said the fact that no real evidence has surfaced could create a sense of fear in the community.
"The city does not need a person who killed another person running around loose," Powdrell said.
Marcantel said no other details of Hall's autopsy or details from the crime scene are being released. He said doing so would undermine the case.
Six days before Hall died, a federal jury had awarded him $307,000 in an excessive force case against three Albuquerque Police Department officers. Hall had not collected any of the money at the time of his death.
Marcantel said he appreciates the leaders of the black community urging anyone who may have any information to come forward, because it will only help the investigation.
Marcantel has said that on Thanksgiving afternoon, several residents living in the area where Hall was found called the Sheriff's Department at least four times to report gunshots being fired.
But when deputies went out on the calls they did not find anyone shooting guns or any evidence that shots had been fired, until they found Hall, according to Marcantel.
According to federal court documents in Hall's excessive force case, in 2002 the officers said Hall was acting suspiciously as he looked into Nob Hill business windows.
The officers said Hall was combative and that is why they used a Taser on him. Hall was so severely burned by the Taser that he lost part of an ear.
In a Journal interview after the verdict, Hall said he did not want anyone to know where he was living because he feared retaliation.
Marcantel said anyone with any information on Hall's death, or information on the gunshots that were heard Thanksgiving Day, can call Crime Stoppers at 843-STOP or 980-2496 if they want to talk directly with a detective working the case. Either way, Marcantel said, they can remain anonymous. A $1,000 Crime Stoppers reward is being offered.