Ex-officer charged with murder in shooting of teenager
His surrender hoped to ease tensions in working-class suburb of Dallas
Former Balch Springs police officer Roy Oliver turns himself in to authorities to face a murder charge after he shot 15-yearold Jordan Edwards, who was inside a car leaving a party.
BALCH SPRINGS — A police officer in this Dallas suburb was charged with murder Friday, six days after he fired his rifle into a car full of teenagers leaving a party, killing a black 15-year-old in the front passenger seat.
The Dallas County Sheriff ’s Department issued a warrant Friday for the arrest of the officer, Roy D. Oliver II, 37, authorities said. Oliver turned himself in Friday night in Parker County, officials said.
Oliver, who was a patrol officer with the Balch Springs Police Department, responded late Saturday to reports of underage drinking at a house party. Oliver and another officer entered the house but left after they said they heard gunshots outside the residence.
As a car with five black teenagers inside drove away from the house, Oliver, who is white, fired his AR-15 rifle, fatally striking Jordan Edwards, a freshman at Mesquite High School, in the head, the police said.
The Balch Springs police chief fired Oliver on Tuesday, saying he had violated departmental policies. In the
Police Department’s first account of the fatal shooting, Chief Jonathan Haber had said the car was reversing aggressively toward the officers when Oliver opened fire. But after Haber reviewed the two officers’ body cameras, he corrected that description: The car had reversed but was accelerating forward and away from the officers when Jordan was struck.
The Edwards family released a statement Friday evening calling the arrest warrant “a bit of a reprieve in a time of intense mourning.”
“Although we realize that there remain significant obstacles ahead on the road to justice, this action brings hope that the justice system will bend against the overwhelming weight of our frustration,” the family said.
Not ready for ‘martyr’
The warrant was issued the day before Jordan’s funeral. Friends and relatives are planning to gather Saturday at Mesquite Friendship Baptist Church in nearby Mesquite. The funeral is closed to the public.
Cedric W. Davis Sr., a former mayor of Balch Springs, said the news of the murder charge would help ease tensions in the city, a working-class suburb of 25,000 east of Dallas.
“I think the benefit here is that it moved fast,” said Davis, who became the city’s first black mayor when he was elected in 2008. “The charge came quickly. In those previous cases, it took months and months,” he said, referring to other high-profile shootings of young black men by police officers across the country.
Jordan’s family released a statement Friday before the arrest warrant was made public urging people not to protest at Jordan’s funeral. “Though we understand what his life and death mean symbolically, we are not ready to make a martyr of our son,” the family said.
Linda Oliver, Oliver’s mother, said Friday night, “We are under a hard no comment.” She said her son is being represented by James Lane, a Fort Worth lawyer, who did not return a call or email.
Other shootings
The charges against Oliver came during another week of national debate about race and police brutality and amid uncertainty about how police violence will be addressed by the Trump administration. The Justice Department under Attorney General Jeff Sessions has indicated it will move away from the aggressive efforts of the Obama administration to oversee law enforcement agencies.
Events of the past week revealed little about the Justice Department’s new direction. Federal prosectors received a guilty plea by a white police officer who fatally shot a black man in South Carolina, but the department declined to press charges against two officers involved in the fatal shooting of a black Louisiana man.
Oliver became a police officer after serving as an infantryman in the Army, eventually rising to sergeant. He was deployed twice to Iraq, from October 2004 to September 2005 and again in 2009.