Calling a Spade a Spade: The Assassination of Darren Seals

When I first heard the news of the death of 29-year-old activist Darren Seals, I was mortified for two main reasons.  First, the manner in which he was killed--suffering a gunshot wound before his vehicle was set on fire--sent chills through my spirit.  Second, those chills recalled the cold-blooded murders of Mississippi civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner and how I'm sure Black people and sympathizers in 2016 feel the same way about another Black man meeting a horrible fate amidst racial injustice and social unrest as folks in the 1960s did about those particular deaths.  However, in lieu of using safe, politically-correct terms like "killing" or "murder", very few people will admit this was a treacherously heinous act committed against someone who was adamant about not only improving and fighting for his community, but also challenging a historically-racist police force.  Hence, I am calling the demise of Darren Seals exactly what I believe it is in my heart of hearts: a premeditated assassination...

When a man describes himself as a "Businessman, Revolutionary, Activist, Unapologetically BLACK, Afrikan in AmeriKKKa, Fighter, Leader", he has clearly prepared himself to be a moving target in a country known for taking out its most influential leaders.  Prior to joining the fight against police brutality, Seals had to survive his second bout with gun violence in 2013 after being shot six times, which fueled his permanent dedication to anti-violence efforts.  He was one of the first and most adamant protesters to surface in the wake of former Ferguson Police officer Darren Wilson murdering Mike Brown in 2014, helping to form the activist collective Hands Up United, becoming close to the Brown family and acting as a liaison between them and other activists.  Fed up with Democratic leadership's treatment of Blacks and frustrated with their response to Brown's murder, he was instrumental in the unorthodox push to elect Rep. Rick Stream, a White Republican, in a 2014 local election.  "Just because they've got the D next to their name, that don't mean nothing," he said in a Washington Post interview.  "The world is watching us right now.  It's time to send a message of our power."

Sacrificing a significant amount of his free time in between twelve-hour shifts as an assembly line worker at a local General Motors plant to lead an organic movement and aspire to be a hip hop artist, the Ferguson native became accustomed to being in the crosshairs of local law enforcement.  Seals correlated his deep-seated history with police with his intrepid attitude in a Facebook post in November 2014:

Caught my first felony at 18 for slamming a cop on his head. Was shot 7 times and had a smile on my face the whole time.  I'm a fighter and I been one all my life.  I do what I do because I'm fearless I don't fear jail, death, NOTHING...I'm too much of a man to sit back and do nothing while innocent boys are murdered by cops.

In a July 24 tweet, he recalled a police stop to one of his Twitter followers: "yea 10 detectives pulled me and my brother over, pointed guns on us and told me 'choose your enemies wisely'."  In the last few weeks of his life, he was a fervent supporter of Colin Kaepernick's protest against police brutality, including a back-and-forth argument with another Twitter user who said, "He wears socks with pigs for officers. You really gonna waste your breath defending him?"  He swiftly responded, "Cops kill unarmed black men, women, teens, and children everyday. You really wasting your time ta[l]king about socks?" Considering how sharp-tongued he was when it came to his run-ins with and opinions about law enforcement, you have a hard time convincing me that local police can be absolved of any involvement in Seals' assassination.

So here are more of the details: on September 6 at 1:50 a.m. in the 9600 block of Diamond Drive in Riverview, St. Louis County Police responded to a call of a vehicle on fire.  Once the blaze was finally extinguished, they found Seals' remains and the coroner determined he was shot at least once before the vehicle was set on fire.  However, the surrounding details give me cause for pause for two main reasons.  First, according to Google Maps, the secluded street where the vehicle he was found in dead ends at a field next to a concrete mixing plant near the Mississippi River--which was also less than five miles away from Seals' residence.  Second, and more important, the picture above as well as other pictures circulating on Twitter manifest how St. Louis County Police supposedly did not tape off the crime scene and left the remaining evidence scattered--which seems like a cavalier treatment of a highly-charged, sensitive matter rife with racial, social and political implications.

What doesn't help to dispel the rising conspiracy theories is the eerily identical pattern in the deaths of five other men in and around the St. Louis area.  Dylan George Izirarry, Dana Wallace and Bryant Evans were charged in the September 2014 murder of 24-year-old Darnell Robinson, who was shot four times in the head before his car was burned in St. Louis.  In November 2014, 43-year-old Antonio Jones was found in the trunk of car that was also set on fire in an East St. Louis yard after having died from two gunshot wounds to his abdomen.  Hairl T. Johnson was a person of interest, but by all accounts, he was never even brought in for questioning and no other suspects have been named.  In December 2014, former St. Louis Police officer Don McGhee shot at a vehicle after Dominic Irons shot and critically injured McGhee; in the aftermath, 28-year-old Terrell Beasley died after two gunshot wounds and being burned in a vehicle, although conflicting reports name his killer as either McGhee or Irons.  In February 2015, 24-year-old Vincent Cascella's body was riddled with bullets before his car was set on fire in St. Louis, but despite his family offering a $30,000 reward six months later, his killer(s) still have yet to be identified or apprehended.

The most interesting connection to Seals' death, however, is that of 20-year-old DeAndre Joshua, who was friends with Mike Brown and Dorian Johnson.  In November 2014 on the same night when a grand jury elected not to indict Darren Wilson for the murder of Mike Brown, Joshua was shot in the head before his car was set on fire.  In a September 7 article for The Daily Beast the day after Seals' death, Justin Glawe talked about his experience in finding out more details behind Joshua's murder:

The day after Joshua's death I went to the scene of his murder and knocked on doors. I was struck not only by the unwillingness of people to answer...but the unwillingness to talk even to each other. No one knew the person next door. No one know anything about the car fire that happened in the parking lot of their apartment the night before. People didn't even want to admit to seeing police and firefighters arrive...I was told by friends and family of Joshua that his proximity to Brown was causing tight lips to become even tighter. One family member even went so far as to speculate that the police had something to do with the killing.

Rumors may have been enough to write Joshua's death certificate as word quickly spread about how he testified during a grand jury probing into Brown's murder.  However, the St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney's Office confirmed to the The Washington Post Joshua was not a witness and his family also confirmed he couldn't have been a witness because he was nowhere near the scene of Brown's confrontation with Wilson.

Now given Seals' checkered past, his often-vitriolic social media comments and the aforementioned shooting incidents, a "secret police hit squad" could easily deflect the blame to others with enough motive.  As "disruptive" and "violent" as many within conservative media paint the BLM Network and its allies to be, they could allow the speculation of retaliation to swirl around--especially since 1) he publicly criticized BLM even days before his death and 2) he smacked activist Deray McKesson in February 2015 during a protest at the Ferguson Police Department after a heated verbal dispute accusing McKesson of stealing money from local protest groups.  They would have no problem letting activist and feminist Brittany Ferrell take the fall for her controversial January 6 Twitter rant: "Darren Seals is a prime example why I think black men are the upmost of trash...I cannot wait for the day we can drag his a-- in the street. Cannot. Wait."  Let suspected White supremacists and presumptuous experts tell the story, he was "killed by black on black crime"--which would conveniently fit the narrative of three of the aforementioned murders.  However, being one of the most visible and outspoken activists in Ferguson against police brutality who was "warned" mere months before his murder, who else could recreate previous crime scenes, cover up the details and contaminate evidence regarding Seals' assassination better than the police--especially when Darren Wilson faced no criminal charges for killing Mike Brown and no suspects have been identified in DeAndre Joshua's murder?

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Let me be clear: I usually don't engage in or entertain conspiracy theories, and I have no concrete evidence to support my claims.  However, in a country where COINTELPRO was allowed to run rampant at the federal government level, I put nothing past a collection of police forces who have allowed racism and prejudice among their ranks to go unchecked for years.  Through their unyielding protests, the people of Ferguson, East St. Louis, St. Louis and the surrounding areas have been crying out to the Black community at-large as well as the rest of America that their state and local governments along with their police departments have not valued their lives, civil rights or basic needs.  Native son Darren Seals was perhaps the loudest and most passionate of those voices in Ferguson; unfortunately, knowing the level of his influence, someone thought it necessary to permanently take away his voice and I have a hard time believing it was anyone other than a few members of the Ferguson Police Department, the St. Louis County Police Department and other disgruntled law enforcement officers who had enough.  Prayerfully, whether the police were involved as they were suspected to be in DeAndre Joshua's murder, the remaining soldiers refuse to be intimidated, choose to keep their boots to the ground and carry on Seals' legacy of fighting the myriad of injustices facing Black and Brown people in Ferguson and beyond.