Fired officer charged with murder in Black man’s death
Second Atlanta cop at scene co-operating with prosecutors in case
ATLANTA—Prosecutors brought murder charges Wednesday against the white Atlanta police officer who shot Rayshard Brooks in the back, saying that Brooks was not a deadly threat and that the officer kicked the wounded Black man and offered no medical treatment for over two minutes as he lay dying on the ground.
Brooks was holding a stun gun he had snatched from officers, and he fired it at them during the clash, but he was running away at the time and was more than five metres from officer Garrett Rolfe when Rolfe started shooting, District Attorney Paul Howard said in announcing the charges.
“I got him!” the prosecutor quoted Rolfe as saying.
The felony murder charge against Rolfe, 27, carries life in prison or the death penalty, if prosecutors decide to seek it. He was also charged with 10 other offences punishable by decades behind bars.
The decision to prosecute came less than five days after the killing outside a Wendy’s restaurant rocked a city — and a country — already roiled by the death of George Floyd under a police officer’s knee in Minneapolis late last month.
“We’ve concluded at the time that Mr. Brooks was shot that he did not pose an immediate threat of death,” Howard said.
A second officer, Devin Brosnan, 26, stood on Brooks’s shoulder as he struggled for his life, Howard said. Brosnan was charged with aggravated assault and violating his oath.
The district attorney said Brosnan is co-operating with prosecutors and will testify, saying it was the first time in 40 such cases in which an officer had come forward to do so. But a lawyer for Brosnan emphatically denied he had agreed to be a prosecution witness and said he was not pleading guilty to anything.
A lawyer for Brooks’s widow cautioned that the charges were no reason to rejoice.
“We shouldn’t have to celebrate as African-Americans when we get a piece of justice like today. We shouldn’t have to celebrate and parade when an officer is held accountable,” L. Chris Stewart said. Brooks’s widow, Tomika Miller, said it was painful to hear the new details of what happened to her husband in his final minutes. “I felt everything that he felt, just by hearing what he went through, and it hurt. It hurt really bad,” she said.