Officer’s lawyer drops his client after video of shooting surfaces
Print Edition
DRAMATIC video that shows a white South Carolina police officer shooting at a fleeing black man has led authorities to file a murder charge against the officer amid public outrage over a series of deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of US law enforcement agents.
The video, provided to the dead man’s family and lawyer by an unidentified person, shows Michael Thomas Slager, an officer in the city of North Charleston, firing eight shots at the back of Walter Lamer Scott as Scott runs away. The 50-year-old man falls after the eighth shot, fired after a brief pause.
The shooting comes amid an ongoing nationwide debate over issues of trust between law enforcement and minority communities. Protests, some violent, erupted in many cities last year following the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and the chokehold death of Eric Garner in New York City. The furore grew after grand juries declined to indict the white officers who killed them.
North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey announced the charge against Slager at a news conference on Tuesday. Authorities said that Scott was shot after the officer had already hit the man with a stun gun after a traffic stop on Saturday that began over a faulty brake light.
Slager, who has been with the North Charleston police for five years, could face 30 years to life in prison if convicted.
The mayor and police chief were visiting Scott’s parents to offer their condolences.
Summey and Police Chief Eddie Driggers arrived at the home of Walter Scott Sr and Judy Scott yesterday morning. They live in nearby Charleston.
Scott’s parents appeared separately on TV shows yesterday morning.
Scott Sr told the NBC “Today Show” that his son may have run because he owed child support, which can lead to jail time in South Carolina.
He said that in the video the officer “looked like he was trying to kill a deer running through the woods.”
Mrs Scott called the video “the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen.”
“I almost couldn’t look at it to see my son running defenselessly, being shot. It just tore my heart to pieces,” she said.
She was speaking on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
Attorneys for the family said the man who shot the video is assisting investigators. The person has not been identified.
Chris Stewart, an attorney for Scott’s family, said the video forced authorities to act quickly and decisively. “What if there was no video? What if there was no witness, or hero as I call him, to come forward?” he said.
Slager’s attorney David Aylor had released a statement on Monday saying that the officer felt threatened and that Scott was trying to grab Slager’s stun gun. However, Aylor dropped Slager as a client after the video surfaced.
The video shows Scott falling after the shots and then the officer slowly walking toward him and ordering the man to put his hands behind his back. When Scott doesn’t move, Slager pulls his arms back and cuffs his hands.
Then he walks briskly back to where he fired the shots, picks up an object, and returns back to Scott before dropping the object by Scott’s feet, the video shows.
Slager was denied bond at a first appearance hearing on Tuesday. He was not accompanied by a lawyer.
Protests were being planned in North Charleston, led by a local group formed after Brown’s death in Ferguson.
South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley issued a statement saying Slager’s actions were not acceptable and did not reflect the state’s values or “the way most of our law enforcement officials act.”
Scott had four children, was engaged and had no violent offenses on his record, Stewart said.
In a separate case in South Carolina, a white police officer who killed a 68-year-old black man last year in his driveway was charged on Tuesday with a felony: discharging a gun into an occupied vehicle.
A prosecutor previously tried to indict officer Justin Craven on a manslaughter charge in the February 2014 death of Ernest Satterwhite. But a grand jury instead chose misconduct in office, a far lesser charge.
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