FREEHOLD - Dismissing arguments that a Missouri man feared for his life when a police officer drew a gun at him and fired during a Rumson burglary investigation, a judge Monday ordered the defendant held in jail without bail, saying the dangerous situation was of his own creation.
In granting the state's request to keep Rasheen Yarbrough behind bars while awaiting trial, Superior Court Judge Jill Grace O'Malley noted the defendant struck one police car manned by a Rumson officer and accelerated at a Fair Haven officer during the Sept. 6 investigation into residential burglaries in Rumson.
Yarbrough's attorney, Anthony Cherry, said his client acted out of fear because of his race that night. Yarbrough, 20, of St. Louis, Missouri, is black.
"The officer has a gun to his head in the middle of a dark road,'' Cherry argued at the detention hearing for Yarbrough. "He could be at the wrong end of his bullet because of the nature of his skin.''
Cherry said Yarbrough was not thinking about trying to elude arrest. Instead, he was thinking, "Let me get away from this officer because I'm going to die.''
The judge, however, viewed a police dash-camera video of the incident, played at the hearing by Matthew Bogner, assistant Monmouth County prosecutor. The video did not show the Fair Haven officer pointing a gun to Yarbrough's head. Rather. it showed him firing eight shots at Yarbrough's vehicle as it drove at him before veering off into a bush.
Yarbrough's brother and passenger, Nnamdi Atumodo, 27, of Newark, was wounded in the face.
O'Malley said Yarbrough had no concern for anyone's safety, including his own, the police officers' and his brother's.
She noted the encounter with police occurred after Yarbrough and Atumodo tried breaking into cars at one home in Rumson before moving on to another home, where they broke into a garage and stole children's bicycles before trying to get inside the home through multiple entry points. When they could not get in, the pair stole an Amazon package from the porch and left, O'Malley said.
"Donning ski masks and latex cloves and attempting to enter an occupied home at 4 a.m. certainly has the potential for violence - it's as simple as that,'' the judge said.
"The defendant and his codefendant drove around a residential area at 4 o'clock in the morning, dressed all in black on a summer night, and tried to break into a home where a mother was hiding in her bedroom and calling 911,'' the judge said. "These incidents are ripe for violence and it is the defendant who created this dangerous scenario.''
O'Malley said Yarbrough has similar charges pending against him in Missouri from last year, showing a pattern of behavior that helped to convince her that he must remain incarcerated.
As the judge ordered Yarbrough to stay in jail, a woman in the courtroom gallery, identified by Cherry as the defendant's mother, repeatedly muttered, "because he's black,'' before a sheriff's officer warned her to be quiet.
Atumudo had a detention hearing last week. O'Malley also ordered him held in jail without bail to await trial, noting he was on parole from prison in a robbery case when the Rumson incident occurred.
The two brothers are charged with burglary and related offenses. In addition, Yarbrough is charged with eluding police.
O'Malley scheduled a pre-indictment conference for Yarbrough for Oct. 17.
This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Driver in Rumson police shooting 'created dangerous scenario,' stays in jail: Judge
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