CLARKSDALE, Miss. — There has been a new development in the death of 15-year-old Cornelius McGee Jr. who was shot in Clarksdale two weeks ago.
Julius Voss, the first cousin of former Clarksdale Police Officer Andrew Bankhead who allegedly shot McGee, wants to set the record straight on his cousin’s involvement.
“They have judged my cousin, tried him, and convicted him, based on a lie,” Voss said. “Had never seen him before, don’t know him, hadn’t seen him, knows nothing about him.”
The day after the shooting, McGee’s mother said her son was shot because Bankhead caught him in his house with his 15-year-old daughter that Monday afternoon.
“She let him in the house,” said Jacqueline Rash, McGee’s mother. “They said it was a break-in but it wasn’t a break-in, the daughter let him in the house.”
Voss strongly defends his cousin against that accusation saying, Bankhead doesn’t have a 15-year-old daughter.
“There is no 15-year-old girl,” Voss said. “We definitely want to get that established first, that there was no girl letting the young man in the house.”
Voss says his cousin has a number of guns and video security cameras inside and outside his house and that a suspect was seen on camera entering Bankhead’s house by pushing an AC unit through a back window and finding at least two long guns.
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Bankhead was in the shower with a pistol nearby when the AC unit crashed to the floor.
“That’s when they meet each other and that’s when the shooting started and they have all of this on video camera,” Voss said.
The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation continues to call it an “open and ongoing investigation” but neither MBI nor Clarksdale Police will release the security camera video at this time.
“An MBI Agent, Thursday, requested and was granted a search warrant for the phone of the deceased,” said Judge Charles Webster, from the 11th District Circuit.
Rash told WREG Friday that she has seen a copy of the security camera video provided by investigators but said the person in the video is not her son.
She would not elaborate and declined an on-camera interview.
