Man found guilty of shooting retired police officer David Dorn during 2020 riots

On June 2, 2020 in the city of St. Louis there were riots in the wake of the death of George Floyd. That night some looters set off an alarm at Lee’s Jewelry & Pawn. Retired police officer David Dorn, who was 77-years-old at the time, was a friend of the shop’s owner and usually kept a watch on the alarms. Dorn went to the scene and was shot multiple times by a man named Stephan Cannon. Wednesday, Cannon was convicted of Dorn’s murder:

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Prosecutors argued that as looters ransacked the shelves of the pawn shop that morning, Cannon fled to the street corner, crouched and fired 10 shots at Dorn, killing him as he approached the shop and fired off warning shots to stop the looters…

Dorn’s final moments, as he lay dying on the sidewalk, were captured on a Facebook livestream. Liddell Chapple, the man who recorded the video, reacted in immediate disbelief that someone had killed Dorn over TVs. He testified to what he saw as a lack of value for human life “over materialistic stuff.”

During closing arguments Wednesday, Teer told the jury, “You know you really did something wrong when the streets come in on you. And the streets came in on Stephan Cannon right away. We played the (Facebook Live) video so you understood what the streets said. ‘We don’t do this! This ain’t us!’ The streets gave him up right away.”…

Cannon’s sentencing is set for Sept. 13. The mandatory sentence is life in prison without parole since prosecutors did not seek the death penalty.

Prosecutors didn’t have a murder weapon or any physical evidence in the case. What they did have witnesses who put Cannon at the scene:

On the second day of Stephan Cannon’s trial in St. Louis Circuit Court, [Mark] Jackson said he and “Man Man” Cannon went to Lee’s Jewelry & Pawn on June 2, 2020, the day retired Capt. David Dorn was shot to death outside…

Police found Jackson’s debit card on the floor of the pawn shop. When detectives interrogated him later about what happened, he changed his story several times.

Jackson, who also faces charges in Dorn’s death, testified Tuesday that he picked up Cannon on the evening of June 1 and joined looters at several stores in St. Louis before going to Lee’s pawn shop. After he and Cannon went inside to loot, he heard gunfire outside the store and ran out to his parked car around the corner. He said Cannon and a third man who’d come to Lee’s with them got back in Jackson’s Pontiac G6 and drove off. Jackson said he knew Cannon sometimes carried a gun in a black satchel but didn’t know he had a gun that night. He also said Cannon stayed “silent” after getting back in his car after the shooting and that it wasn’t until the two talked by phone the next day that Cannon said he shot Dorn.

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Dorn’s widow, Ann Wood-Dorn, expressed sympathy for the family of her husband’s killer. “I lost David, and now they’re losing a brother and a son,” she said. She added, “I feel sorry for them, and my heart goes out to them as well because they lost, too.” Wood-Dorn, who is also a retired police officer, is also urging American corporations to stop supporting Black Lives Matter:

“David’s life mattered. It mattered in the community. A lot of the Black leaders in the community knew David. He was a leader in our community and he was there to help people,” Wood-Dorn told The National Desk during an interview Thursday.

Wood-Dorn recently joined two other women – a fellow widow and a woman whose husband was left paralyzed after a violent attack – in calling for major corporations like Coca-Cola, Papa Johns and Pelaton to pledge their support for American law enforcement instead of Black Lives Matter.

“I really do think they were bullied into it,” Wood-Dorn said of companies that have donated large sums of money to Black Lives Matter.

Here’s a local news report on the verdict featuring an interview with Ann Wood-Dorn.

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Ed Morrissey 10:00 PM | November 22, 2024
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