A black teenager was allegedly killed by a white man who claims that he feared for his life as the teen and two more taunted him with a gun. The man reportedly went home after the killing, ate dinner, went to a friend's house and when he was arrested, police said he looked at the incident as another piece of trash taken off of the streets.
New York Daily News reported that the incident took place near a Dollar General Store in Charleston, West Virginia. The white man was identified as William Ronald Pulliam, 62, and the teen was identified as 15-year-old James Means.
Sources claimed that the teenager bumped into Pulliam accidentally and did nothing else to provoke the shooting. Pulliam, on the other hand, said that Means was with two more teenagers in front of a home and that the two other teens told Means to shoot Pulliam with the gun he possessed.
Pulliam said that he was making spaghetti and went to the Dollar General Store to buy something when the three teens first threatened him and looked at him in a funny way. He went back and decided to walk on the other side of the street in order to not encounter the teens again since he feared for his life due to his age, Huffington Post reported. Allegedly, Means saw him and he taunted Pulliam once again and cursed at him.
Pulliam said in an interview that he never said the statement, "The way I look at it, that's another piece of trash off the street" and that the killing had nothing to do with race. The teen was shot twice in the abdomen. Means was said to be unarmed despite the claim of Pulliam that the teen had a gun with him.
A friend of Means, 14-year-old Teonno White, claimed that he spoke to Pulliam in the past after he went to the old man's home to ask him to stop picking on his younger brother. White said that Pulliam yelled at him with expletives and described Pulliam as a really bad guy.
A GoFundMe page was set up for Means to cover his funeral expenses. The donations are now around $10,000.
