Plaxico Burress

Former New York Giants wideout Plaxico Burress, who will spend two years in prison following his plea agreement last week, told ESPN Monday that his finger accidentally hit the trigger of his concealed gun when he tried to catch it as it slipped down his pants leg. The .40-caliber Glock fired after he missed a step walking up stairs, he told the TV sports network. He said he was trying to keep the gun from hitting the ground. The incident happened about five minutes after Burress entered the Latin Club in Manhattan. “My finger hit, like, right on the trigger,” he said. “What are the odds on that happening?” Burress said that when he looked down, he saw blood covering his right Converse Chuck Taylor sneaker. That’s when he knew he had shot himself, he said. “I take two or three steps and like my pants are wet,” Burress said in the interview. He then turned to his fellow teammate, middle linebacker Antonio Pierce, and asked him to take him to the hospital. “And he was like ‘Why?” Burress said. “I said I just think I shot myself, and he was like ‘Noooo!” Burress, who pleaded guilty last week to a weapons charge stemming from the November incident, accepted a two-year prison term. He will be sentenced Sept. 22.

Mississippi NAACP Wants Answers in Shooting

Mississippi NAACP leaders want to know why the officer who shot an African-American man during a police road block is back on the street. “We would like to see the officer, first off, taken off the streets again until this investigation has been conducted,” said Rev. Jimmy Richardson, president of the Pearl River County NAACP. Mississippi NAACP Vice President Clarence Magee agreed. “Our whole intent is to be sure that if his civil rights are violated, somebody should answer for it,” Magee said. Read more.

Morris Brown Pays Off Water Bill, Stays Afloat

Historically Black Morris Brown College in Atlanta has paid of the balance of an overdue water bill, rescuing the campus from the brink of closure. The financially troubled institution is mired in debt and as late as last month owed more than $215,000, but a flurry of last-minute fundraising allowed the campus to submit a check to the city’s water board for 64,887.32, according to station WABE. Read the rest.

 Another police officer’s brutality set the tone that led to the fatal shooting of a young Black man at an Oakland, Calif.-area metro station on New Year’s Day, a newly released video reveals. The Bay Area Rapid Transit Police Department said initially that only Officer Johannes Mehserle was involved in shooting to death 22-year-old Oscar Grant as he lay on the ground with his hands behind his back. What does the new video show? Read more here.

 As prosecutors in Oakland, Calif., ponder whether to file criminal charges against the 27-year-old White transit cop who shot to death a handcuffed young Black man on New Year’s Day, officials for the agency that employed the officer say they’re perturbed by his attitude. “Nobody’s been able to talk to [Johannes Mehserle],” Linton Johnson, a spokesman for the Bay Area Rapid Transit, said of the BART officer who fired the fatal shot. “We’ve been trying aggressively to get him to come in, but he hasn’t. It’s been very frustrating.” Read more here.

Cop accused of shooting handcuffed man quits. Hundreds of Oakland businesses are still cleaning up damage to buildings after a violent downtown protest. In a scene resembling the Los Angeles uprisings after 1992’s Rodney King beating trial verdict, about 100 people were arrested after breaking windows and trashing stores days after a 22-year-old Black man’s death. But as others had done in L.A., some of those vandalizing in outrage over the police shooting of Oscar Grant III left Black-owned establishments damaged, knowingly or otherwise. Read the rest here.

 It looks like Indianapolis Colts star receiver Marvin Harrison is off the hook – at least for now – in a shooting that allegedly involved his rare, semi-automatic, foreign-made weapon. By the sound of Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham Tuesday morning, it is unlikely that the case of the April 29 shooting, which left convicted felon Dwight Dixon and three other people wounded at Harrison’s Philadelphia car wash, will ever be resolved. Why? Because Harrison and the victims, were largely uncooperative and provided “mutually exclusive” and contradictory accounts, Abraham said. “We’re not foolish,” Abraham told reporters at a news conference in her Center City office. “But knowing what happened and proving what happened are two different things. Do I prove my case? With these witnesses? I don’t think so.” From the beginning, Harrison has denied any involvement in Dixon’s shooting. He also denied that his unusual, Belgian, 5.7-mm, semiautomatic pistol has ever fired one of its armor-piercing bullets. “We’re confident of our police ballistics report,” Abraham said, stressing that the bullet that struck Dixon, 32, came from Harrison’s gun. She said that the 36-year-old Harrison had beefed with Dixon, who he had refused to allow into his nearby bar. “At this point, we have nobody,” Abraham said. “We don’t have anybody who will say they saw anybody fire a gun at anyone.”