U.S. URGED TO TRY JONES SLAYING The mother of a Hyattsville man fatally shot by a Prince George's County officer in Fairfax County last month denounced yesterday the version of events outlined by the Fairfax commonwealth's attorney and urged the U.S. Justice Department to prosecute the officer. Mable Jones, mother of Prince C. Jones Jr., said at her attorney's office in Washington that there "is no plausible scenario to justify the homicide committed by Carlton Jones," the undercover narcotics detective who shot and killed her son Sept. 1 after trailing him for 15 miles through three jurisdictions. Yesterday's comments by Mable Jones were her first since Fairfax County Commonwealth's Attorney Robert F. Horan Jr. announced that he would not seek criminal charges against Cpl. Carlton B. Jones, who is no relation to Prince Jones. Horan said the officer feared for his life when he fired the fatal shots. Carlton Jones fired 16 shots, six of which hit Prince Jones. According to Prince George's police and Horan, Carlton Jones, 32, thought he was following a 25-year-old Largo man who drives a black Jeep Cherokee similar to the vehicle used by Prince Jones and who was involved in two ramming incidents with county police earlier in the summer. But Mable Jones, a physician who lives in Philadelphia, said that she doubts the police version and that the Largo resident who was arrested, Derrell Lamont Gilchrist, is simply a "scapegoat for police." "I am convinced, now more than ever, that Carlton Jones lied when he says that my son got out of his Jeep and came face to face with him," she said, adding that Gilchrist has jaw-length dreadlocks and a beard and is nearly a foot shorter than her son. "We now call for the attorney general of the United States, Janet Reno, to do the right thing and prosecute this officer under the criminal rights statutes," Mable Jones said. Fairfax police declined yesterday to say whether Gilchrist was the man named by Carlton Jones in a 911 call after the shooting, and they also declined to release a transcript or tape of the call. Attorneys for Mable Jones said yesterday that they plan to file a civil suit against the Prince George's police and Carlton Jones within the next month. Doing so would give them the legal power to obtain evidence collected by Fairfax detectives, said Ted J. Williams, one of two lawyers on the case. An internal probe by Prince George's investigators continues, and Carlton Jones, a six-year member of the force, remains on paid administrative leave, police said. The FBI is also investigating the shooting.
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