DA to reopen the Oscar Grant case
Eleven years after Oscar Grant was shot to death by a BART officer, the district attorney is reopening the case.
OAKLAND >> Eleven years after Oscar Grant was shot to death by a BART officer, the Alameda County district attorney is reopening the case.
Grant’s family held a press conference Monday calling on District Attorney Nancy O’Malley to reopen the case, pointing out the similarities to George Floyd’s death.
On New Years Day 2009, Grant, a 22-year- old Hayward man, was fatally shot in the back by then-BART Officer Johannes Mehserle, as Grant lay bellydown on the Fruitvale Station platform. Mehserle was charged with murder, but found guilty by a Los Angeles County jury of a lesser crime, involuntary manslaughter, and served 11 months before being released in June 2011.
Mehserle and other officers were called after a fight on a train was reported, and Mehserle claimed he had mistakenly grabbed his gun instead of his Taser when he shot Grant.
Grant’s family is asking that charges to be filed on another officer, Anthony Pirone. Pirone was the first officer to respond to the call that night, along with Officer Marysol Domenici. Grant’s family claims it was Pirone who created “the climate of violence,” pinning Grant down with a knee to his neck — similar to Floyd’s death while in Minneapolis police custody earlier this year.
“We have listened closely to the requests of the family of Oscar Grant,” O’Malley said in a statement Monday afternoon.
“The murder of Oscar Grant greatly impacted the county and the state,” she said. “My office conducted the intensive investigation that led to the prosecution of BART Officer Johannes Mehserle for the crime of murder. The trial occurred in Los Angeles due to a change of venue ordered by the court on the motion of the defense. Unfortunately, the Los Angeles jury only found Officer Mehserle guilty of involuntary manslaughter.”
Both Grant’s and Floyd’s deaths sparked a nationwide movement and outcry for police accountability for the deaths of Black people at the hands of white officers, police reform and defunding of law enforcement.
Grant’s mother, Wanda Johnson, and his uncle Cephus X Johnson, known as Uncle Bobby X, gathered Monday afternoon at the Oscar Grant III Way at the Fruitvale BART station to call for the case to be reopened. The family says that the district attorney promised charges would be filed soon after Grant’s death.
“Justice delayed is justice denied,” Wanda Johnson said.
“We should not have to wait another 11 years. … We were told then that it should happen, and it should happen now,” Wanda Johnson said.
According to a 2009 BART police internal investigation report, which was released last year after a public records request, Pirone contributed significantly to Grant’s shooting. Although he never faced criminal charges at the time, he was fired for his role in the shooting and statements he made, which contradicted video surveillance and other officers’ and witnesses’ accounts of that night. Although Pirone never got his job back, Domenici eventually returned to duty.
When Pirone and Domenici first responded to the Fruitvale station, Pirone entered the train car without his partner, disregarded his training, and rushed through the initial investigation, the report found. Witnesses described Pirone as a “drill sergeant” and “crazy,” “agitated” and “harsh.”
“The actions of Officer Pirone started a cascade of events that ultimately led to the shooting of Grant,” the report said.
The report said Pirone used profanity when speaking to Grant and his friends, at one point calling Grant a racial expletive, which the report found was inexcusable. Pirone is said to have punched Grant in the face, then kneed him in the head, applying pressure to Grant’s back to prevent his hands from becoming free. When Pirone released his weight off of Grant’s back, Grant put his hands behind his back as instructed so he could be handcuffed.
T hen, Mehserle shot him.
O’Malley said she has assigned a team of lawyers “to look back into the circumstances that caused the death of Oscar Grant. We will evaluate the evidence and the law, including the applicable law at the time and make a determination.”
Represented by civ il rights attorney John Burris, Grant’s family sued BART, who agreed in a 2011 settlement to pay Grant’s daughter a total of $5.1 million.
Until this year, Mehserle had been the only officer to face charges in over a decade in Alameda County for the death of a civilian. San Leandro Officer Jason Fletcher was charged last month for voluntary manslaughter for the death of Steven Taylor, who was fatally shot at Walmart store in April.