Patrick Lyoya: Michigan officer charged with second-degree murder | Police News

Officer faces second-degree murder charge in fatal shooting of Patrick Lyoya during a traffic stop in early April.

A Michigan police officer who fatally shot an unarmed Black man in the head two months ago has been charged with second-degree murder, a prosecutor in the US state has announced.

The family and supporters of Patrick Lyoya, 26, had called on authorities to charge Grand Rapids police officer Christopher Schurr, who killed Lyoya during a traffic stop on April 4.

Christopher Becker, the Kent County prosecuting attorney, told reporters on Thursday that based on the police investigation into the incident, he had decided “to charge Christopher Schurr with one count of second-degree murder”.

“Second-degree murder is felony offence. It is punishable by up to life in prison, with the possibility of parole,” Becker said during a news conference.

He said Schurr had turned himself in to authorities and would be arraigned on Friday.

Lyoya’s death spurred protests in Grand Rapids and renewed calls for an end to police violence against Black people across the US, which saw a wave of Black Lives Matter demonstrations in 2020 amid several other high-profile police killings.

Citing a need for transparency, police in Grand Rapids released videos after Lyoya’s death showing the fatal shooting, including critical footage recorded by a passenger in the 26-year-old’s car.

They show Lyoya stepping out of the car on a rainy street, seemingly confused and asking “What did I do?” as the officer repeatedly asks for a driver’s licence and orders him to get back inside the vehicle.

Video shows Lyoya running from the officer, who stopped him for driving with a licence plate that did not belong to the vehicle. They struggled in front of several homes and the officer repeatedly ordered Lyoya to “let go” of his Taser, at one point demanding: “Drop the Taser!”

Lyoya’s family, originally from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, had demanded that authorities fire the officer and file criminal charges against him.

“My life was Patrick, my son,” Lyoya’s father, Peter, said during an emotional news conference in mid-April.

“To see that my son has been killed like an animal by this police officer, to see this video they showed, I see that I have no life, I see my heart being broken,” he said. “I’m asking for justice. I’m asking for justice for Patrick.”

A forensic pathologist who performed an independent autopsy on Lyoya said the officer held his gun to the back of the man’s head and fired once.

Kent County Chief Medical Examiner Stephen Cohle said in his autopsy that he found Lyoya had a blood alcohol level more than three times the legal limit, local media reported.

Prominent US civil rights lawyer Ben Crump, who has been supporting the family, said in April that the videos of Lyoya’s killing showed an “unnecessary, unjustifiable, [and] excessive use of fatal force”.

“You see a police officer escalate a minor traffic stop into a deadly execution,” Crump told reporters at that time. “The video shows us that this is as his mother, father have said – an execution. There’s no way to try to spin it or justify it.”