A Michigan prosecutor filed a second-degree murder charge on Thursday against the policeman who killed Patrick Lyoya, a black man who was shot in the back of the head while he lay on the ground following an intense physical struggle recorded on a bystander’s phone.
Kent County prosecutor Chris Becker announced his decision to file the charges against Grand Rapids Officer Christopher Schurr, who killed Lyoya minutes after a traffic stop on April 4. Video from a passenger in the vehicle captured the black man's chilling final moments.
Mr Schurr fired the fatal shot while Lyoya was on the ground, demanding that the 26-year-old refugee from the Democratic Republic of the Congo “let go” of the officer’s Taser.
“The death was not justified or excused, for example, by self-defence,” the prosecutor said, reciting the elements of a second degree murder charge.
The officer, who is white, told Lyoya that he had stopped his car because the licence plate didn’t match the vehicle. About a minute later, Lyoya began to run after he was asked to produce a driver’s licence.
Mr Schurr caught him quickly and the two struggled on the ground before the fatal shot.
The killing outraged Lyoya's family and community and set off protests in which demonstrators decried the shooting as yet another example of the use of unjustified deadly force by police against a young black man.
A forensic pathologist who performed an independent postmortem on Lyoya said the officer held his gun to the back of the man's head and fired once.
Mr Becker said Mr Schurr had turned himself in to authorities and would be arraigned on Friday. A charge of second degree murder carries a maximum sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole.
Grand Rapids, with a population of about 200,000, is 260 kilometres west of Detroit.
News agencies contributed to this report
