Details are emerging about police killing of Louisiana 6-year-old, and they are very disturbing

At a court hearing Monday in Marksville, Louisiana, Judge William Bennett set bail at $1 million apiece for two law officers, Marksville Police Lt. Derrick Stafford and city marshal Norris Greenhouse Jr., both facing second-degree murder charges for shooting into a car last week, seriously wounding Chris Few and killing his autistic 6-year-old son, Jeremy Mardis. Few's lawyer, Mark Jeansonne, said that police body-camera footage described in the hearing apparently showed Few with his hands up when Stafford and Greenhouse opened fire. "This was not a threatening situation for the police," he said. Soon after, Bennett issued a sweeping gag order prohibiting anyone involved in the case from discussing it.

Stafford and Greenhouse, moonlighting as Marksville marshals, originally said that they had been trying to serve Few a warrant when he hit a dead end and tried to back up into them on the night of Nov. 3. But that proved false, said State Police Superintendent Col. Mike Edmonson. "There was no warrant." Edmonson said that only Judge Bennett and state police have seen the body-cam footage, captured by one of two active-duty Marksville police who arrived at the scene before Stafford, 32, and Greenhouse, 23, started firing. He declined to describe the video, but said last Friday that "it's the most disturbing thing I've seen — and I will leave it at that."

The details get worse the deeper you dig. Local District Attorney Charles A. Riddle recused himself from the case on Monday, apparently because Greenhouse's father, Norris Greenhouse Sr., has been a deputy DA for 20 years and is currently head of the DA office's major crimes unit; the Louisiana Attorney General's Office will be prosecuting the case. The Marksville Police Department purchased body cameras a few months ago, the mayor said, after the police commissioner raised questions about several controversial police shootings in the county, The Advocate reports, and both jailed officers are targets of civil complaints alleging unprovoked violence and police intimidation.

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Few's fiancée, Megan Dixon, told The Advocate that Greenhouse, a former high school classmate, had started messaging her on Facebook and driving by their house. "I told Chris and Chris confronted him about it and told him, 'Next time you come to my house I'm going to hurt you,'" Dixon said. Whatever happened on Nov. 3, Few is still in the hospital, recovering from multiple bullet wounds but too injured to attend the funeral of his young son on Monday. In fact, as of Monday evening, Few hadn't even been told that Jeremy Mardis is dead. Read more disturbing details about the case at The Advocate, and watch Avoyelles Parish Sheriff Doug Anderson announce the bail amount to cheers from the crowd gathered around the courthouse. Peter Weber