Police Brutality / Individual record
Wendell Allen
Unarmed 20-year-old Wendell Allen was shot to death in his family's New Orleans home during a police narcotics raid on March 7, 2012.
- Record ID
- PB-050
- Date of death
- March 7, 2012
- Outcome
- Fatal
- Location
- New Orleans, LA
- Category
- Police shooting
What happened
On March 7, 2012, New Orleans police officers executed a drug-related search warrant at the Allen family home in Gentilly. Wendell Allen, a young college student who was not the raid's target, appeared on a staircase during the operation. Officer Joshua Colclough fired a shot into Allen's chest and killed him. Other children and family members were present in the house. An independent police monitor later criticized the planning of the raid, the initial investigation and the failure to account for key evidence. A recording by another officer documented the operation around the shooting; the family demanded answers and action against the officer who killed Wendell.
Investigation & findings
In August 2013 Colclough pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to four years in prison. In 2015 an independent police monitor publicly criticized major flaws in the investigation. This is an established criminal conviction and sentence, not merely an unresolved allegation.
Source record details
- Source incident ID
- Historical source-derived record, pre-2015
Sources & records
- Primary source
- Additional source
- Methodology and national police killings trackingMapping Police Violence · Dataset/methodology
- Published historical compilation of Black people killed in police custody (1999–2014)SAGE journal / cited NAACP LDF memorial listing · 2016 · Secondary scholarly source