KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A letter from the mother of a man killed by a KCMO PD detective urged Missouri Gov. Mike Parson not to pardon the detective after a trial judge found him guilty and a Missouri appeals court upheld the conviction.
Laurie Bey, the mother of Cameron Lamb, shot and killed by Detective Eric DeValkenaere on Dec. 3, 2019, said in her letter, "I thank God for choosing me to be his mother."
Lamb was her youngest child and only son, Bey states in her letter.
She describes her son as "a loving father, brother, grandson, uncle, nephew, cousin, friend and child of God."
DeValkenaere shot Lamb as he backed into a garage at his home in the 4100 block of College Avenue.
"Governor Parson, I would like you to know that Cameron was not who the FOP betrayed him to be, nor was he the bad guy that former police chief Rick Smith implied when he made the statements that "the bad guy is dead," the letter states. "I want you to know who he really was. Cameron was a devoted father of three sons, Cameron Jr., age 10, Cincere age 8, an Cam'ron, age 5. These children were his everything. He devoted his life to creating memories - taking pictures, making videos teaching them about loving one another and being kind to one another," the letter states.
Bey claims in her letter the Missouri Attorney General's Office made no effort to contact her family about the case until two hours "before deciding to flip a decision to support the defendant and not the prosecutor."
She also faults the Attorney General's Office in her letter for not being forthcoming about the case and showed "very poor service."
RELATED | DeValkenare timeline
A grand jury indicted DeValkenaere in June 2020 and a four-day bench trial was held in November 2021 in front of Jackson County Circuit Court Presiding Judge J. Dale Youngs.
Youngs found DeValkenaere guilty of second degree involuntary manslaughter and armed criminal action.
The Missouri Court of Appeals, Western District, upheld the conviction. The appeals court also denied a defense motion to reinstate an appeal bond.
"Governor Parson, I am asking that you will please read the court of appeals' 42 page ruling," Bey urges in her one-page letter. "All the judges were appointed by a Missouri governor. You are a busy man running our great state and could not possibly have the time that these judges had to directly review the evidence. I ask you to defer to the courts that had the time to do so. When they read and saw the evidence, they all believed Mr. DeValkenaere to be guilty and properly convicted."
DeValkenaere is now being held in the Missouri Department of Corrections.
The governor's office confirmed earlier this week it “received an informal request for clemency from Mr. DeValkenaere’s family attorneys along with hundreds of additional calls and requests from private citizens on his behalf. However, we have not received an official request filed through the Missouri Parole Board at this time.”
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