Orlando officers cleared

Affairs investigator Nick Collins wrote that police can shoot into a moving car if the officer believes the driver “is using the vehicle in a manner that poses imminent danger of death or great bodily harm” to the officer or anyone else, or if the officer has “no reasonable avenue of escape.”

But OPD updated its policy in June 2016 to prohibit officers from firing at a fleeing car “unless a person in the vehicle is immediately threatening the officer or another person with deadly force by means other than the vehicle.”

The policy now states, “a moving vehicle alone does not constitute a threat that justifies a member’s use of deadly or potentially deadly force, particularly if the sole objective of the driver is to evade capture.”

An OPD spokesman on Friday could not explain why internal investigators used an outdated policy when determining if Wong

Shue and Abreu acted within agency guidelines. The policy was changed because shooting into a moving vehicle is often ineffective and can be dangerous to officers and the public, then-police Chief John Mina, now Orange County’s sheriff, said in a memo at the time.

A grand jury indicted Wong Shue on a manslaughter charge in Silva’s death a year after the shooting, following an investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which probes all shootings by OPD cops, and a review by the Orange-Osceola State Attorney’s Office.

Prosecutors dropped charge a week later.

The same review by the State Attorney’s Office cleared Abreu in March. Chief Assistant State Attorney Deborah Barra wrote in a letter to Chief Orlando Rolón that his use of deadly force was “in response to what he reasonable believed was a deadly threat to the others.”

The shooting happened after Wong Shue and Abreu were alerted by a Marshall’s employee to two women who appeared to be shoplifting. In an interview with internal investigators, Abreu said the women, Jocelyn Villot and Brittany Chandler, gave him a “blank stare” when he drew his gun and told them to “get down on the ground” as they walked out of the store.

Villot and Chandler kept walking and got into a van being driven by Silva, which was backed into a parking spot.

Video of the shooting, which was captured on bystander’s cellphone and obtained by WKMGChannel 6, showed Wong Shue and Abreu surrounding the van, guns drawn. Wong Shue told investigators Silva was looking back and forth between him and the