Bernard Monroe

Bernard Monroe Sr., 73, a retired power company lineman who had lost his voice to throat cancer, was shot and killed by Homer, Louisiana Police Officer Tim Cox on his own front porch during a family cookout on February 20, 2009. Two white officers had entered the Monroe family's property chasing Monroe's son, who was not wanted for any crime; as Monroe walked toward his front door to check on his elderly wife, Cox fired several shots through the screen door from inside the house, killing him. Multiple witnesses told reporters they saw the second officer pick up a handgun Monroe kept visibly on the porch and move it, using a latex glove, to a position near Monroe's body. A Claiborne Parish grand jury declined to indict Cox in 2010, and both officers subsequently resigned. No one has ever been charged in Monroe's death.

Homer, LA · Claiborne Parish County

• 2009: Case opens — victim reported missing or found.
• Documented milestones (renewed investigation, media coverage, family advocacy) to be added as sourced.
• Present: case remains unresolved. No named suspect has been convicted.

• The pursuit onto the Monroe property and the shooting, per contemporaneous reporting by the Chicago Tribune and NBC News, and the Southern Poverty Law Center's subsequent civil lawsuit.
• Officers Tim Cox and Joseph Henry, both white, entered the Monroe family's property during a cookout attended by a dozen family members and grandchildren while chasing Monroe's son, Shaun Monroe, who was not wanted for any crime and was not arrested; witnesses said Homer police had a practice of targeting Shaun Monroe for stops without legal cause.
• Henry shot Shaun Monroe in the back with a Taser as officers pursued him into the family home; the elder Monroe, unable to speak due to his cancer, walked toward his front door to check on his wife inside.
• Cox, positioned inside the house, fired several shots through the screen door at Monroe without warning, according to the family's lawsuit; Monroe's wife, Louise, came out to find her husband alive but bleeding on the sidewalk, where he died.
• Multiple witnesses at the scene told reporters they saw Officer Henry pick up a handgun Monroe kept visibly on the porch for protection, using a latex glove, and that the gun was later found next to Monroe's body; witnesses disputed the officers' account that Monroe had been armed and threatening.
• The shooting drew the Louisiana State Police, the FBI, and the U.S. Department of Justice to the town, and prompted a march led by the Rev. Al Sharpton protesting the killing.
• A Claiborne Parish grand jury, whose proceedings were handled by the state attorney general's office rather than the local district attorney, returned a “no true bill” in 2010, declining to indict Cox on any of the charges considered, including first-degree murder, second-degree murder, manslaughter, and negligent homicide.
• Both Cox and Henry resigned from the Homer Police Department following the shooting; the Southern Poverty Law Center filed a wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of Monroe's family, which was settled with the town in August 2010.

• Whether Monroe was in fact armed and threatening, as the officers maintained, or whether a weapon was moved to the scene after the shooting, as multiple witnesses told reporters they saw happen, was never resolved by any criminal trial, since the grand jury declined to indict.
• Whether Homer Police Department's documented practice of targeting Shaun Monroe for warrantless stops was itself ever formally reviewed or disciplined beyond the resignations of the two officers involved in his father's death has not been made public.
• The full findings of the joint Louisiana State Police, FBI, and Department of Justice review of the shooting, beyond the state grand jury's declination, have not been made comprehensively public.

• Southern Poverty Law Center — “SPLC Sues Homer, La., and Former Police Officers in Fatal Shooting of Elderly Black Man”
• NBC News — “Killing of black man by police shakes La. town”
• Fox News — “Grand Jury Refuses to Indict White Cop Who Killed Black Man”
• Project Cold Case
• Murder Accountability Project
• NamUs