CLEVELAND — Latrice Carter, the mother of Antwoina Carter, is speaking publicly after two Cleveland Police officers received disciplinary suspensions for their response to a 2024 deadly shooting involving her daughter.
Those officers received disciplinary suspensions.
“I think the world saw the wrongdoing that they did,” Latrice Carter said. “I feel like they shouldn’t have their jobs.”
Events of March 17, 2024
On the morning of St. Patrick’s Day 2024, Antwoina came under attack while driving near her home in the Glenville neighborhood.
Her family sat down with me days later:
Prosecutors said Christopher Stinson, who was a passenger in a vehicle following Carter, fatally shot her — firing 20 rounds and striking her once in the back.
The incident was captured on surveillance video:
As Carter turned onto her street, officers Dylan O’Donnell and Amanda Rock were already at her home investigating an unrelated domestic violence call in which a car window had reportedly been shot out.
Hearing gunfire and seeing a vehicle approaching at high speed, the officers fired. Carter’s car crashed, and she later died at the hospital.
A forensic investigation confirmed neither officer fired the fatal shot, and prosecutors cleared them of criminal wrongdoing.
Earlier this year, Stinson took a plea deal in connection with Carter’s death and was sentenced to 27 to 32½ years in prison. He pled guilty to involuntary manslaughter, felonious assault, and discharging a firearm on or near a prohibited premises.
Two other suspects also agreed to plea deals.
Lashuwndre Coleman was sentenced to a year of probation for obstructing official business.
Trinity Ford was sentenced to five to six years in prison for involuntary manslaughter.
Internal Investigation
On Tuesday night, I broke the news that the officers had been given disciplinary suspensions.
O'Donnell received a 15-day suspension without pay, while Rock received a 10-day suspension without pay, both to "commence, and be effective the next working day after you are served with this notice."
A letter from the city’s Director of Public Safety, Wayne Drummond, stated the officers violated department policy when they fired their service weapons on March 17, 2024.
In the letter, Drummond said, “Both officers discharged their service weapons during this highly volatile and rapidly unfolding situation. It’s evident from the investigation, as well as from the officers’ own accounts and the video evidence reviewed, that they were in fear for their lives at the time they made the decision to use deadly force.”
The letter goes on: “Policy requires that officers verify a visible and immediate threat before discharging a firearm. In this case, the investigation concluded that those standards were unfortunately not met. As a result, consistent with the Division’s disciplinary matrix, and our obligation to apply it uniformly, disciplinary suspensions were issued.”
Carter family reacts
Latrice told me the suspensions fall short.
"You shouldn't be an officer if that’s how you reacting. I don't think nobody should be an officer if they scared,” she said. "I feel like at the end of the day you could have been helping instead of adding to the situation."
Tom Monah, who represents the Carter family, said the disciplinary suspensions validate the family’s longstanding concerns.
"I mean, that just affirms everything we've been saying for over a year now, how things went down could not have been in line with public safety or even the department's own policy," he said.
I asked Monah what the lesson should be for Cleveland Police going forward.
“They have to train our officers more. You have to train the officers more,” Monah said. “Because you have communities like this that already distrust officers … already don't call officers unless they have to, and then you have things like that happen. It doesn't build the trust. It destroys the trust more and more.”
Monah said he’s preparing a civil lawsuit against the police officers on behalf of Latrice Carter.
“Negligent intentional infliction of emotional distress, because by watching her daughter getting shot at traumatized her,” Monah said. “She's almost a year after (and) is still in therapy. She actually fears the police. Just from talking with her, you can see that she is still traumatized. The entire family is traumatized."
I asked Latrice Carter, “Is there some sympathy for law enforcement who are in some of these intense scenes and the uncertainty of what they face?”
She said, “You heard me say 'there go my daughter' before you started shooting. And then after the fact, you still was firing into her car as she went up the street. There's no sympathy from me.”
Latrice said she is trying to remain strong for her other children and for Antwoina’s five children — her grandchildren — whom she is now raising.
She spoke about the challenges she's facing during an interview with me ahead of the one-year anniversary of Antwoina's death:
In our most recent sitdown, I asked her, "Do you still talk about her daily?"
“Every day,” Latrice said.
She said Antwoina is always close through photographs that fill the house, memory books, and in the children she left behind.
Antwoina’s youngest is about to turn 2 years old. The oldest is 12 years old.
“They're all running around here. So, you say when you look at them it's a reminder?” I asked Latrice.
“It is,” she said.
“It's a happy reminder?” I asked.
“It is,” Latrice said. “Because I know she not here, but I got them to hold on."
Reaction from officials
Earlier this week, I asked the city for an interview with Drummond to further discuss the case and the officers’ suspensions, but the city said, “Public Safety respectfully declined to interview.”
When I asked the city if it had a statement regarding the case, it said the letter from Drummond “speaks for itself.”
I also reached out to the Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association earlier this week to discuss the case but haven’t heard back.
It’s not the first time O’Donnell has been punished. In 2022, he received a written reprimand for “lack of service” after not including details of an assault in a criminal damaging report.
