Exclusive: Alleged Jamar Clark Victim Speaks Out

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- The woman with Jamar Clark the night police shot and killed him is telling her story in a WCCO exclusive.

She says the investigators' description of her role that evening is wrong. She was not dating Clark, and there was not a domestic dispute.

"I didn't call and say, 'Come and shoot him,' or none of that," RayAnn Hayes said. "They have no reason to come and be combative at all, because they didn't get a call like that. Not from me."

Hayes says she's worried for her safety, and didn't want her face shown on camera.

"Jamar Clark was with his girlfriend, RayAnn Hayes, 41," Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman said during Wednesday's press conference.

Hayes doesn't characterize her relationship with Clark the same way.

"Just because you are with someone does not mean you are dating them," she said.

From the beginning of Mike Freeman's press conference, Hayes disputes the narrative. She says she was never in danger from Jamar Clark, the man she calls a friend -- not a boyfriend.

"No dispute. No domestic. None of that," she said.

Hayes says the night Clark was shot, they were at a party on Plymouth Avenue. She says she tried to get in the middle of an argument, and got hurt in the process.

"I twisted my ankle, and when I twisted my ankle, I fell and hit the door thing and busted my lip -- that's all," she said. "It's not an emergency, it's just -- there was an altercation downstairs in the building and I tried to break it up, and in the process of it, I think I got my leg sprained and I can't move."

In her 911 call early on Nov. 15, Hayes told the dispatcher she was hurt an hour and a half earlier. Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman says people at the scene as well as EMTS told investigators Hayes pointed out Jamar Clark as her boyfriend, and the man who hurt her. She was questioned as she was put into the ambulance.

"They gave me a shot for the pain, and I laid back and I remember Jamar coming up to the window. I remember that," she said. "And I remember the ambulance guy like, 'Oh, he's trying to break in,' and I said, 'No he's not. He's just trying to help me.'"

Hayes says the last thing she remembers is seeing Clark's face as the ambulance doors closed. She says she didn't know Clark was shot and killed until two days later.

"You guys are letting these officers go, and trying to put it on me," she said.

So why come forward now?

"Because I'm tired of the rumors," Hayes said.

She says she wants the community to know she, too, is grieving, and had no idea a night of having a good time would turn to tragedy.

"I can't heal because he's not healed," she said. "He's not in peace right now, so how can I ever be at peace, and he's not at peace?"

Hayes says she has a boyfriend, and was dating him back in November when Clark was shot. She says Clark was just a friend she liked spending time with, and says rumors of a relationship are just that -- rumors.

Hayes says she believes, in her heart, that Clark should be here today. She says he did not deserve to die the way he did.

Hayes told police she'd been drinking and smoking marijuana that night, and that she never said she saw any part of the police officers' interaction with Clark.

Still, she's upset with what she says is a police story that begins by putting Jamar Clark in a bad light.