A former police officer in Columbus, Ohio, has been indicted on homicide expenses within the August 2022 deadly taking pictures of a Black man who was killed in mattress whereas the police tried to serve a felony warrant.
Nearly a yr after the deadly encounter, a Franklin County grand jury on Friday handed up the indictment towards Ricky Anderson, 60, a white former Ok-9 officer, within the taking pictures demise of Donovan Lewis, 20. In addition to the homicide cost, Mr. Anderson, who retired from the Columbus Division of Police in March, was charged with reckless murder, in response to the Franklin County Prosecutor’s Office.
Mr. Anderson, who was booked into the Franklin County Jail on Friday, is to be arraigned on Monday, when bail shall be set and when he’ll enter a plea of not responsible, his attorneys mentioned.
Mr. Lewis was fatally shot early on Aug. 30, 2022, whereas sitting up in mattress as law enforcement officials had been making an attempt to serve warrants towards him on expenses of improper dealing with of a firearm, home violence and assault.
At a news convention on Friday morning, Mr. Lewis’s mom, Rebecca Duran, fought again tears as she mentioned that the “bottom line is he should still be here.”
“I’m going to be grieving that for the rest of my life,” Ms. Duran mentioned.
Rex Elliott, one among Ms. Duran’s attorneys, mentioned on the news convention that “Donovan Lewis was given a death sentence.”
“It’s time for Ricky Anderson to be held accountable,” Mr. Elliott mentioned.
Mark Collins and Kaitlyn Stephens, attorneys for Mr. Anderson, mentioned in an announcement on Friday that they’d “fully anticipated” the indictment “with the grand jury process being under the dominion and control of the special prosecutors.”
“This case is not about if Ricky Anderson made the decision to use deadly force, but why he made the decision to use deadly force,” Mr. Anderson’s attorneys mentioned. “As we progress through litigation, the evidence will show that it was because he was justified in doing so.”
The deadly taking pictures of Mr. Lewis is one among quite a few high-profile deadly police shootings of Black folks within the Columbus space which have spurred protests, led to a $10 million settlement in a single occasion and prompted the Department of Justice to assessment town’s police.
Body-camera footage, printed by The Columbus Dispatch, reveals that Columbus law enforcement officials arrive at Mr. Lewis’s house round 2:30 a.m. on Aug. 30, 2022. They start knocking on the door, asking these inside to come back out.
A person who solutions the door tells the officers that the others inside are sleeping, the footage reveals. The police detain the person, and officers then unleash a canine to search out Mr. Lewis.
A couple of moments later, the footage reveals, Mr. Anderson opens the door to a bed room and, inside seconds, fires at Mr. Lewis. As Mr. Lewis, who was shot within the stomach, flails on the mattress, the officers yell at him to point out his palms and “crawl out.”
About two minutes after Mr. Lewis was shot, a police officer is heard saying that they should get Mr. Lewis “out to the medic.” Mr. Lewis was taken to a hospital the place he was later pronounced lifeless.
In an announcement in March saying Mr. Anderson’s retirement that month, the police division mentioned that he had “retired in bad standing due to the ongoing criminal and administrative investigations into the death of Donovan Lewis.”
Mr. Lewis’s household has additionally filed a lawsuit towards Mr. Anderson and 4 different officers who had been current when Mr. Lewis was killed.
Kate Pishotti, director of the Columbus Department of Public Safety which oversees town’s police, mentioned in an announcement on Friday that “the death of Donovan Lewis is a tragedy for all involved.”
“We respect the process of fully independent investigations for police-involved shootings,” Ms. Pishotti mentioned. “The grand jury has spoken, and now we must let this case work through the criminal justice system.”
Source: www.nytimes.com