KPD's portrayals of the life and death of
Andre Stenson differ greatly from the accounts of those who knew
him
by Betty Bean
Andre Stenson worked 50 hours last week, and hadn't been dead 24 hours when
an Internal Affairs investigator from the Knoxville Police Department showed
up at Calhoun's on the River to ask about him. The tone of his questions
offended the crew at Calhoun's.
Manager Claudia Franks says he "...was on a fishing expedition for negative
information....He wanted to know 'Was he late? Was he temperamental?' It
seemed like he was trying to dig up dirt. I told him Andre was an awesome
employee..."
Assistant Manager Mary Alice Bishop just finished a 6-month training period
working in the kitchen with Stenson, 34, whose sudden, violent death after
he fled from police officers Jan. 9 has brought tensions between the police
and the city's minority community near the flash point. She and others at
Calhoun's are angry at insinuations emanating from KPD "sources" that Stenson
died of a cocaine-induced heart attack as police attempted to arrest him.
"That stuff about him being on crack is bullshit," says bartender Scott Langley.
"Andre worked all the time. He drank orange juice by the gallon."
(Autopsy findings reveal Stenson died from a rare, congenital condition that
caused his heart to fail under extreme stress. The findings also note two
lacerations to his head and a swollen right eye.)
Bishop tears up when she describes the way Stenson's face dimpled when he
smiled, and she doesn't like the way media accounts have hammered at the
fact that he was a parolee who'd done time for burglary.
"This is the busiest restaurant in the state, so it's important to get employees
who are reliable and consistent... And that was Andre. He made salads here,
and he took pride in doing it right. He had been back at work 8 months and
was determined to turn his life around. Calhoun's took him back after he
had done his time. Two months ago, I gave him two free dinners for him and
his wife for being so consistent and reliable. When they called me and told
me what happened, I fell in the floor crying. I still can't believe it. Andre
is dead because he was born black."
He appeared to have a chance to start over when he got his job back and asked
his longtime companion Marcellina to marry him last year. They'd been together
since 1986, and had four children: Hannah, 11; Ivan, 7; Adrianna, 5; and
Roselyn, 4. His co-workers recall him talking about how much he wanted to
do the right thing by his family, after all those years and all the times
he'd messed up. Bishop imitates proud father Stenson pretending to admonish
the kids when Marcie'd bring them to the restaurant: "He'd shake his finger
and say, 'Now, y'all sit down and be good.'"
Jeff Nolan, who worked "hand-in-hand" with Stenson in the kitchen, says Stenson
helped him push his car around the corner and tried to lend him a couple
of bucks for gas the last time he saw him.
"We were talking about this large sum of money he had to come up with to
get his license back..."
Nolan, who is in his 34th month of recovery from a 10-year crack habit, says
he and Stenson were traveling the same hard road.
"He shared his inner secrets with me... They (police, who claimed they found
crack cocaine in his car and sprinkled on the ground where he died) lied
on him. He was no crack addict. And if he had a medical problem, it happened
when they (KPD) met him. I know first hand when you are a crack addict and
you encounter the police, you don't run. You can't..."
Toxicology results show he had no cocaine in his system.
"He's just out of the penitentiary, just got married, just bought him a little
van, had people showing him love... My personal thoughts are anger took over
where justice left off... It took off and it multiplied and it became a deadly
force of anger... We're ordained by God to die, but was this by God's hand?
"I wasn't there, but I know what happened. Andre jumped out of the car; they
caught him. Andre jerked loose, they were angry. They put a choke hold on
him. For them to say they didn't beat him, that's a great lie."
Sometimes after closing, co-workers would give Stenson a ride home, and sometimes
he'd refuse, Franks says, because he feared for their safety. And if they
were unfamiliar with East Knoxville, he'd warn against stopping for blue
lights.
"He'd say 'Just keep on going until you get on a better side of town.' "
The last time Marcie Stenson saw her husband living, he was wearing the brand-new
black running suit she'd gotten him for Christmas. It was Jan. 9, but Andre
had been working so many hours through the holidays that he'd had the opportunity
to wear it only once before, even though he loved dressing up, looking sharp.
He had it on when he and Alando Murphy went out to Sarge's Barbecue, where
Marcie worked. She served them, and they sat outside and shot the breeze
with the owner's wife.
What he said to her just before he left wasn't anything particularly out
of the ordinary: "He asked me were we busy; I said no. He said 'I'm gonna
go out for a little while. I won't be late.'" He'd rented some videos and
was going to go home and watch them, Marcie remembers.
Murphy works in the kitchen at Calhoun's on the River and speaks in the musical,
island-inflected patois of his native Jamaica. Stenson's speech was not so
lilting. He is described by virtually everyone who knew him as a friendly,
obliging man with a severe stuttering problem that rendered him virtually
speechless under stress.
Murphy says he got a call from Stenson Friday afternoon.
"His wife goes to work at 4, and they only got one vehicle for the family
— he called, said 'Alando, my wife go to work.' So I picked him up,
watched some TV show for a minute, then went to a barbecue place — Sarge's
— to eat some food. He was the only one to eat, and after he eat we
left."
The two men got into Murphy's car and headed for the Eastside. Stenson, who
didn't have a drivers license because he hadn't been able to scrape together
the fee (which can be nearly $1,000) required by state law to restore a revoked
license, was at the wheel.
"He was driving because it was his part of town," says Murphy, who had asked
Stenson to show him around East Knoxville night spots.
Around 10 p.m., Stenson drove down Martin Luther King Boulevard through Five
Points and hung a right onto Chestnut, where he stopped at the Corner Store.
Afterward, they headed south on Chestnut toward Eddie's Lounge, a short block
away. Murphy says Stenson had been worried he was going to end up back in
prison.
"The man (Stenson), he just got a new parole officer, who give him a hard
time — the simplest things, he's gonna violate him," Murphy says. "And
all he's trying to do is he's trying to take care of his kids, things like
that... He is a working class man, trying to make a difference... Everybody
downgrade a man .. ain't nobody said he got married, went to work every day,
take care of his kids..."
They had just pulled out onto the street when they saw a police officer on
foot, who signaled with his flashlight for them to pull over. Stenson complied.
"The cop say 'Did you know you didn't have your lights on?' He say 'No, I
didn't know'... The cop say 'Let me see your license.' The man, he panic
and run. He wasn't doing no type of drugs.. That is a bunch of bull, what
they say... If they did find drugs in my car, think I'd be here now? Went
and get my car next day, didn't pay no fines or nothing like that. They had
dogs in there, didn't find nothing..."
When Stenson took off running, Murphy says "The officer try to catch him,
fell and bust his ass, take his aggravation out on Andre... He was pissed
off—I don't understand that anyway..."
Chestnut Street was alive with activity that night, and several witnesses,
speaking on condition of anonymity, agree that the officer was visibly angry:
"That cop was mad because he busted his ass in the street. They were laughing
at him up at the club and he wanted some payback," says one.
"Yeah," says another. "They looked stupid. Like the Keystone Kops."
But things got unfunny, fast. Some say they heard the officer say "I'll get
you for that, Motherfucker," as he took off after Stenson, who ran down Chestnut
toward a vacant lot at the intersection of Chestnut and Selma.
Two brothers, also speaking on condition of anonymity, say they were home
watching ESPN when they saw flashing lights down at the corner and went outside
to check out the commotion.
"We came out on the porch and heard hollering — like pain. It stopped
abruptly, in the middle of a long, painful scream...We came down here to
the corner, heard somebody say 'They done beat dude down...We walked down
the sidewalk and seen them (a police officer) pumping on his chest.... When
the ambulance came, after a while, they pulled it back in the field, turned
off the lights... he was dead when that ambulance got here..."
The two brothers say the "pumping," stopped before the ambulance arrived.
Another man came who came to see what was happening says he arrived a few
minutes before the two brothers. He says he saw "Lights going crazy on the
grass. Heard one of them say 'Why'd you resist, asshole?' Dude said
'Ahhhhhhhhhh!' They stopped giving him CPR before the ambulance got there.
There was a trainload of cops..."
An area business owner: "We thought they were over there beating a dog...
you could hear them beating him... We couldn't do nothing but stand here
and look. We didn't have in our minds that they're over there killing that
guy..."
A young woman in a Dolphins jacket says she walked down the sidewalk looking
toward the fallen tree where dark figures were struggling, illuminated by
jerky beams from flashlights. "I hollered 'They're down there beating him.'
They said 'Shut up and get the fuck away...' "
"We could hear the licks," says one of the two brothers.
By this time, the lot was marked off with yellow crime scene tape and nurse
Sarah Griffin, who had been driving by on her way home from work, also saw
an officer performing chest compressions, which are only done when there
is no pulse.
She and the others say when the ambulance arrived, it first parked across
Selma Avenue from the vacant lot where Stenson lay. They all say it pulled
into the lot with its lights off several minutes later, with no sense of
urgency.
"They didn't cut on the big spotlights like they would normally do," Griffin
says. She describes Stenson as limp and unresponsive when they loaded him.
She appeared before City Council Tuesday and said she's tired of hearing
promises to "get to the bottom" of fatal encounters between police and citizens.
"The only 'bottom' we ever get to is the bottom of somebody's grave."
These observations contradict police officials' contention that Stenson was
alive, struggling and vocal when he was lifted into the ambulance. Griffin's
account is consistent with those of the anonymous bystanders, who speculate
that police planted crack cocaine they claimed was sprinkled around Stenson's
body and in Murphy's car.
"If I'm running and I'm dirty [carrying drugs], the shit's going up on the
roof right off," says one young man. "And I ain't gonna open it. Takes too
much time. You don't keep that shit on you till they run you down..."
The scene was tense, witnesses say. "Everybody was sitting here mad, talking
crazy to the police," one man says. "Somebody says, 'Get they badge numbers,
and the cops jumped in their cars and left."
They believe the police are responsible for Stenson's death: "Medical problems?
Died of a heart attack? He died of flashlights upside the head..."
Another neighborhood resident: "The black community has lost faith and confidence
in the KPD. and if they don't get their act together, we're gonna take a
contract on them.They want us out of here like the Black Panthers carrying
12-gauge shotguns to protect ourselves from them? We've lost faith and we've
lost hope."
A younger man adds: "They ain't gonna put them four (officers involved) back
out here. So you white folks, watch out. They'll be coming your way..."
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