Trial date to be set next month in Jackson wrongful-death suit

Attorneys will meet next month to determine when a wrongful-death lawsuit that names three Jackson police officers will go to trial.

Norma Jean Baer filed a lawsuit in Cape Girardeau County Circuit Court in February naming Jackson Sgt. James Barker, officer Larry Miller and Capt. Robert Hull as defendants in March. The trial date will be set Dec. 12.

In the lawsuit, Baer says the officers used "unnecessary and excessive deadly force" and directly caused the death of her son, Aaron Hemingway, on Feb. 27, 2009.

On that day, Hemingway drove from Perryville to Jackson, where at Center Junction, police and witnesses said, he shot at and injured two Ameren Missouri linemen making repairs to a substation. Police say that shortly after the shooting, Hemingway shot himself in the head with a 12-gauge shotgun.

According to incident reports from the Jackson Police Department, officers tracked Hemingway through witnesses' descriptions of the shooter's vehicle, a maroon pickup. Witnesses also provided police a license plate number that checked back as belonging to Hemingway.

Miller spotted Hemingway first following radio traffic describing the incident and the suspect's vehicle. Miller had to turn around his squad car to get behind Hemingway, who was farther down Ridge Road and stopped his truck in the middle of the road, according to reports made by all three officers.

Barker and Hull were in a squad car about 100 feet in front of Hemingway's truck.

In his report, Miller wrote that from his own vehicle he could see the driver of the truck lean over in his seat. He said he pulled out his pistol and pointed it at the driver as he approached the passenger side of the truck. Miller said he saw Hemingway with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his right temple, put his pistol back and called for medical personnel.

Based on crime scene photographs, which show the way the shotgun was lying in the vehicle, Baer suggests in the complaint that Hemingway wouldn't have been able to shoot himself in the head. She also says the "deadly force" used by officers was not justified, as Hemingway wasn't a threat at the time he was stopped. Police stopped her son without doing a thorough investigation on whether he had been involved in a crime, Baer wrote in the complaint.

Pertinent address:

Ridge Road, Jackson, MO

525 S. Hope St., Jackson, MO

44 N. Lorimier St., Cape Girardeau, MO