Friends Hurt, Family Haunted After Va. Teen Is Slain by Officer
By Michelle Boorstein and Steven Ginsberg
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, February 27, 2006; Page B01
Aaron Brown's music textbook, "The Grateful Dead: Annotated Lyrics," still lay yesterday on the living room coffee table, where the 18-year-old college student had left it. Photos of the grinning, long-haired Eagle Scout were on nearly every surface of his family's small, single-story Springfield home, with images of a shirtless Aaron on stage with his guitar, a tuxedoed Aaron at the prom, Aaron posing with his parents.
And everywhere were the regrets.
"We are devastated," Jeff Brown said last night. "We can't believe our beautiful son is dead over a stupid check."
Aaron Brown was shot about 3:40 a.m. Saturday by an off-duty Alexandria police officer in the parking lot of an International House of Pancakes on Duke Street near Landmark Mall. An IHOP employee had told the officer that Brown and three friends left the restaurant without paying.
The officer, who was in uniform and working security at the restaurant, tried to stop their 1995 Jeep Grand Cherokee and said it was threatening to hit him when he fired, according to police.
"The car was coming toward him, and he was in fear for his life," Amy Bertsch, an Alexandria police spokeswoman, said yesterday.
The driver, Stephen J. Smith, 19, of Alexandria, was later charged with driving while intoxicated and possession of marijuana.
As Brown's fellow graduates from Annandale High School railed against the unidentified officer and Smith yesterday, Jeff and Cheri Brown set a more conciliatory tone. They said they were more haunted than angry that "such a lovable soul" could be gone so quickly.
"As far as the officer feeling threatened, that's what he said he felt; we weren't there," said Jeff Brown, who has the same long, brown hair, round face and warm brown eyes as his son.
Cheri Brown said she hadn't spoken with Smith, a friend of her son's since middle school and the one at the wheel of Jeff Brown's Cherokee when the officer shot. "But I'm sure he's going through a tough time," she said.
There was a very different reaction earlier in front of the dreary, pink stucco building that houses the restaurant and a Comfort Inn. Brunch-goers passed a makeshift memorial of photos of Brown and bunches of roses flapping in the frigid wind.
"The cop is to blame. I want his badge," said Susan Rauch, 19. She attended Northern Virginia Community College with Brown, traveled to Germany with him last summer with the Annandale high school choir and had gone to the prom with him and a group of other students.
Friends Hurt, Family Haunted After Va. Teen Is Slain by Officer
"You step in front of a car, and obviously, you are going to feel in danger," she said. "That cop just ended what would have been an amazing future."
Rauch and Katie Burton, 18, another Annandale graduate, seethed as they looked at the memorial. They questioned the statement by police that the young men had left the restaurant without paying. One theory circulating yesterday among family and friends was that the four had left the money on the table instead of paying at the register.
"Aaron was one of those guys you'll never find again," Rauch said as Burton nodded. They described him as constantly cracking jokes, dancing, laughing down the school's hallways. They said he was handsome, an amazing guitarist and the kind of friend you could come to if you were having a "little breakdown."
"He was one of those guys that if you were a girl, you'd be lucky to date," Rauch said. "He had long hair, so people thought of him as a rocker, but everyone loved him: the preps, the rockers -- everyone."
Bertsch, the police spokeswoman, wouldn't go into much detail about the shooting, saying the department is conducting a criminal investigation as well as an internal one. The case will be reviewed by the FBI for possible civil rights violations, something she said is standard for deadly force or other high-profile cases.
"Obviously, the officer is under investigation, and a young man is dead," Bertsch said. "To be fair, we would never discuss eyewitness accounts."
As about 20 friends and relatives clung to one another at the Brown home last night and sobbed, his parents spoke calmly about wanting people to donate money to a charity, Guitars Not Guns, instead of giving flowers. The group gives music lessons to at-risk youngsters.
The Browns said, however, that they will pursue unanswered questions.
They said that they were not told promptly about the location of their son's body and that they believe he would have liked to donate his organs. Police also told them that four or five bullets hit the car, including one in the driver's side rear door and one on a rear quarter-panel.
"How could that happen if the vehicle was coming straight at him?" Jeff Brown asked.
They said they would await the investigation but were inclined to view the shooting as an overreaction.
"If their policy in a situation like this is to throw themselves in front of a moving vehicle and then use deadly force, maybe that policy needs to be reviewed," Jeff Brown said.
Dozens of people debated the question of responsibility on the Web site for WJLA (Channel 7), with some defending the officer and others questioning the use of force. Some said they were simply in mourning.
"A lot of it just doesn't make sense," said Colin Agnew, 20. "All I know is one of my best friends is dead."
Agnew said he and Brown became blood brothers at a scouting event last year, when they were throwing away some crab claws.
"He cut the back of his hand, and he cut my palm," Agnew said. "He grabbed my hand and slapped it down on his. It was just something really personal and an intimate moment between us. No matter what happens now, part of him is with me."
Agnew said he met Brown when they were students at North Springfield Elementary School. They were in Eagle Scouts together for a year before Brown sat next to Agnew one day on the bus and said: "Hi, my name's Aaron. What troop are you in?" Agnew recalled yesterday. "I said, 'We've been in the same troop for a year, you moron.' "
The friendship was sealed. Agnew said Brown didn't have "a bad bone in him. He wouldn't say anything bad about anybody unless it was a celebrity he didn't like. There wasn't a way you couldn't like him."
