No charges to be filed against cops in 3 cases

State’s attorney clears police officers in 2018 shootings

Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby declined to press charges against officers who fired their guns while responding to three separate incidents in 2018, with newly released documents showing her office found that the suspects in each case fired their weapons first.

In the reports released Tuesday, Mosby’s office clears police in last year’s shooting deaths of Billy Lewis Rucker and Nathaniel Sassafras.

Rucker was shot and killed after police said he fled during a traffic stop and fired at officers on Jan. 28, 2018.

Mosby’s report backs up the officers’ accounts, saying that body camera footage and eyewitness accounts all support the narrative that Rucker shot first.

Police said at the time that Rucker abandoned his car in Northwest Baltimore and fired at a pursuing officer before dropping his pistol magazine during the chase.

The report says that after Rucker shot at one of the pursuing officers, another officer shot at him14 times, striking him nine times. He was taken to Sinai Hospital, where he died, the report reads.

Mosby’s office wrote that “all available evidence supports the conclusion that the law enforcement officer’s actions were taken in self-defense.”

As for Sassafras, the office wrote that when police began pursuing him on Sept. 23, 2018, he lay down in a prone position and fired a 9 mm handgun armed with a laser sight at one of the responding officers, striking him three times.

The officer and his partner then returned fire, the report reads, striking Sassafras 20 times. The officer survived his injuries; Sassafras did not.

In the report, an unnamed woman raises concerns “over how many times the officers shot the man on the ground” but could not identify who shot first.

“Under these circumstances … there is sufficient evidence to support a finding that (the responding officers’) use of deadly force towards (Sassafras) was objectively reasonable to protect himself from the immediate and imminent danger of death or serious physical injury from (Sassafras),” the report reads.

The third incident involves an alleged armed robbery at a 7-Eleven in the 300 block of North Charles Street downtown on Jan. 16, 2018, in which officers fired their service weapons at the suspects.

The report says the two suspects — who eluded police custody and, the report notes, “remain at large and have not been identified at this time” — entered the building with one brandishing a weapon and declaring their intent to rob the store.

The report says as officers arrived on the scene, the man exchanged gunfire with an officer toward the front of the store. No officers were hit, the report says, and it is unclear whether either of the two suspects were.

After a brief period during which officers and the suspects retreated to cover, the report says, the armed suspect then exited through the front of the store and exchanged gunfire with two other officers.

The report says neither of the two officers were hit and that the suspect was able to elude police after running down North Charles.

The other suspect, who the report states did not display a weapon during the incident, was able to elude police by running out of the front door and down Saratoga Street.

Thirteen shell casings from the first suspect’s firearm were recovered from the scene, the office wrote.

The report says the officers’ account is supported by body camera footage.