Officer Stan Farris, a 26-year veteran beat cop, told the city's Police Oversight Focus Group that "I wanted to work on the street so it's more likely I'll be involved in shootings." In that, he has succeeded. In 1999, Johnny Cornell became the fourth person who Officer Farris shot during his career, and the second to suffer mortal wounds. Each time Farris has been cleared both by the department (in this case Chief Stan Knee), by the District Attorney's office, and by the Travis County Grand Jury, which is convened and largely controlled by the DA.

In the Johnny Cornell case, Farris claimed that the mentally impaired Mr. Cornell rushed him with a kitchen knife, wielding it over his head as though he were planning to physically attack the officer. The only corroborating witness that Cornell "rushed" Farris was an EMS technician who Farris apparently knew prior to the shooting. Moreover, by Farris' own testimony, he compared stories with the EMS technician before other officers arrived on the scene: "Jason with EMS came up to me and asked me if I was alright," Farris said in a sworn affidavit. "I told him I was okay and I asked him if he had seen what had happened." Despite the availability of this testimony, all Farris' superiors accepted Farris' account, as did the DA, the grand jury and all of Austin's mainstream media.

To have reached this conclusion, police and the grand jury must have chosen to ignore testimony by the only eyewitness to the shooting who did not have a prior relationship with either the shooter or the victim: Yawar Abbas, the store clerk in whose parking lot the incident occurred. Mr. Abbas swore out an affidavit in the case contradicting Farris' testimony. For starters, "the body shop guy told me that the son had a knife but I didn't see it," he told APD Homicide detectives on 2-2-99.

Abbas said he "could see the son as the police officer got out of the car. The son was walking in the direction of the police officer. The police officer told the son to stop one time and the police officer backed up towards the back of the police car and he had his gun out. The son never did stop and continued to walk toward the direction of the officer and the mother's car. I was yelling to the police officer that the son was crazy. I yelled, 'He's crazy, he's crazy!' The ambulance guy had gotten out by now and was yelling for me to get out of the way. I backed up and I saw and heard the officer shoot the son three times. The son fell down to the ground face first."

Where is the raised knife, the threatening, the "rush" toward the officer? It is nowhere to be found in this witness' statement. Nor do these elements appear in Georgia Parr's testimony.

This web site has always contended that the authorities who engage in secret oversight of APD officers' alleged misconduct seldom examine incriminating evidence very closely, and tend to downplay or overlook facts that would portray the officer in a bad light. Nowhere is this more evident than in the case of the Cornell shooting.

This graphic from the Travis County Medical Examiner fails to support Officer Farris's claim that Mr. Cornell was "rushing" him when he fired his weapon. Officer Farris told investigators he shot three times quickly, then once more when Cornell got to his knees and lunged at him. Examine the graphic below. According to Cornell's mother, Georgia Parr, who witnessed the shooting, the first shot hit Cornell at the base of the neck. Supporting this claim, the coroner found a bullet had entered Cornell's neck from the left side sloping slightly downward and forward, lodging near his right collarbone. The coroner determined that this shot to the neck had been the fatal wound. The second shot entered Cornell's left shoulder, and the third shot entered the left side of his chest, as though in his dying moments he were turning to face his assailant.

Farris told investigators he fired the fourth and final shot when Cornell got to his knees and lunged at him. However, as clearly depicted on this diagram, the last shot entered Cornell's body in the middle of his back. The trajectory of the wound indicates it went downward into his body lodging near his buttocks. For a bullet to take this angle, Cornell either would have to have been shot from above, or while he was prone on the ground. If this analysis is correct, then Cornell was shot from the left side, not the front as Officer Farris told investigators, then finished off with a shot to the back after he fell.  

This document supports Cornell's family's claims that Cornell wasn't approaching the officer when he was killed, but instead that he was facing his mother to the officer's left. Georgia Parr told police at the scene that she had taken a dull kitchen knife from her son and thrown it away near a stand of trees. But Cornell ran over to pick it up just as Officer Farris arrived in his police car, and he started to walk back toward her. In Ms. Parr's scenario, Cornell wasn't moving toward the officer but toward her, his mother, who by everyone's testimony was standing more than ten feet to the officer's left. This would better explain the gunshot angles, which clearly came from Cornell's left, not his front as would have been the case if he'd rushed Officer Farris with a raised knife. If Cornell were facing his mother standing to Farris's left, then one would expect the gunshot wounds to enter on Cornell's left side with a trajectory to the right, as above.

Though his sworn statement never mentioned it, at a hearing of the city's Police Oversight Focus Group, Officer Farris admitted to shooting Cornell in the back:

Q: So your shots were only in self defense on that shooting?

A: That's correct. . . . .

Q: Were there shots though through the man's back?

A: Yes there was. Absolutely there was. Yes, three shots came as he was running toward me. I was staggering backwards. He hit the ground on all fours, started back up, and I fired a fourth shot before he could get back up. Yes ma'am, I did. . . . .

Yes ma'am, he did.

Last updated June 3, 2000