© Triad NC NewsOutside the scene of Keith Vidal’s killing.
The incident occurred on the afternoon of Sunday, January 5th, when Mark Wilsey and his wife called police for assistance with their son, Keith Vidal, who was suffering from a "schizophrenic incident" and was disoriented. Vidal had obtained a screwdriver, which his parents say was tiny and could not have hurt anyone. Distressed over his disoriented state, his parents called the police to help calm him down and take away the screwdriver.
The Boiling Spring Lakes Police arrived at the home, as well as Brunswick County Sheriff's deputies.
Vidal's parents say they had tried multiple times in the past to get him treated for his mental illness, but had been unsuccessful. At eighteen years old, he weighed only 90 pounds.
The responding officers came into the Wilsey home and treated their son like a violent suspect.
© WECTKeith Vidal.
When Vidal would not drop the screwdriver, officers tased him multiple times and took him to the floor. Mark Wilsey witnessed the incident, and says an officer said, "We don't have time for this!" before fired a pistol at his son - between the men who were holding him down.
"We called for help, and they killed our son. No reason for it, deadly force. There was no reason. They had Tasers on them, and they didn't have to even tase him, they could have just talked to him, talked to him another 10 minutes," Wilsey told Triad NC News.
Both parents watched as their son died before their eyes. "Where is the justice, why did they shoot my son?," his mother asked, breaking down at the scene.
"There was no reason to shoot this kid," Mark Wilsey told WECT-6 News. "They killed my son in cold blood. We called for help and they killed my son."
The incident has been placed under the investigation of North Carolina's State Bureau of Investigation and no officers' names have been released.
Police are rarely equipped with the training and temperament to deal with mentally ill individuals, as reflected by many tragic stories. One such case occurred in 2011, when a schizophrenic man named Kelly Thomas was gruesomely beaten to death by police officers in Fullerton, California. The killing of Kelly Thomas is somewhat unique because the officers were actually charged with murder after much public outcry. That may well be the righteous thing to do in the Vidal case, based on the witness's statements. But first it will require public outrage.
Don't call the police for help. They won't.