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Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke was not justified in shooting Laquan McDonald once – let alone 16 times – as he walked down the street with a knife, a juror said on Thursday. jurors shortly before the charge.
The testimony of former FBI agent Urey Patrick reinforced the prosecution's position that there were other ways to apprehend the 17-year-old boy that night as McDonald moved away. police on the scene.
The risk posed by McDonald's "did not translate into the need to use lethal force to stop it," testified Patrick, who relied on the infamous video of the police dashcam to draw his conclusions.
"He never said anything to anyone, never made threats, never made a gesture to the police who confront him," said the expert on the use of force by the police. "Here, in this video, he moves away from them."
This marked a solid end for the pursuit after playing much of the day before with the defense on the bullets that killed the Chicago teenager and how fast he died.
Closing their file on the fourth day of the testimony – faster than expected – the prosecutors went through the video with Patrick and a second witness.
McDonald's mother, Tina Hunter, who witnessed the lawsuit Thursday for the first time since the start of the testimony, bowed her head as the video aired several times, but she could still hear witnesses telling of the death of her son. son in detail. She started crying softly and burying her face in a handkerchief while Reverend Jesse Jackson, sitting with the family, wrapped her arms around her and gently rubbed her.
Hunter, who has never publicly spoken of the shooting, left the Leighton Criminal Court building without comment.
Mr. Van Dyke, age 40, is charged with two counts of first degree murder, 16 counts of indictment. The prosecutors argued that Van Dyke had no legal justification to open the fire because the teenager posed no threat, but Van Dyke's lawyers attempted to paint McDonald's as a violent and uncontrollable person who disobeyed the PCP police.
In the minutes leading up to the shooting, other police officers called a Taser unit to help apprehend McDonald's and tried to pin him with their cars. Patrick praised these efforts, telling the jury that the other officers had responded proportionately to the risk posed by the teenager.
"It's a risk. There is no question of it. He was not compliant and he is armed with a knife. But there is no one within reach and he is moving away from the only people on the scene that could be within his reach, "he said.
Even though McDonald's was an imminent threat at one point, the threat ended when he was shot and dropped in the street, said Patrick, who has agreed to testify across the country. In shootings involving the police, he added, the police will continue shooting for a second or a second and a half before they can "recognize" that the threat has ended.
Prosecutors have already established that McDonald's fell on the pavement less than two seconds after being shot for the first time, but that Van Dyke continued shooting for about 12 seconds, emptying his semi-automatic rifle at 16 shots.
"Mr. McDonald fell very suddenly, very hard," said Patrick. "He is at this stage clearly unable."
Despite intense cross-examination by senior defense lawyer Daniel Herbert, Patrick remained firmly convinced that McDonald's was not a threat justifying Van Dyke's shot.
Nevertheless, the defense may have gained ground when Patrick, the author of a well-respected book on the use of force in law enforcement, stated that the fact that other officers not drawn had no bearing on Van Dyke's justification. Prosecutors often reminded jurors that Van Dyke was the only one of the 10 officers on the scene to shoot.
Herbert also suggested for the first time during his interrogation that Van Dyke might have believed that McDonald had a gun since he pulled his pants at one point by the belt. But Patrick said he did not find a reasonable conclusion considering the video and radio traffic before the shoot. Indeed, Van Dyke never raised this concern with investigators after filming, according to previously published city records.
Prior to Patrick's testimony, an FBI ballistics expert helped the jury know where and when Van Dyke's gun bullets hit McDonald's in the video taken from a police dashboard camera.
Since the video does not contain audio, the expert, Scott Patterson, told the jury that he needed to rely on visual cues to determine when each shot was fired. He said his analysis was further complicated by the flashing lights of the police car behind Van Dyke, which made it difficult to see the gun shots and the slide of Van Dyke's pistol return to indicate a shot.
Patterson, an FBI ballistics expert, said that a slowed-down version of the video showed several key moments, including Van Dyke's associate, Joseph Walsh, who flinched and dodged when the first shot was fired, stating that he "was not ready for shot to shoot. "
He also noted the "plumes" of debris – not "smoke puffs" as some have said – that were thrown out where bullets hit the road after McDonald's fall, sometimes after crossing his body.
Patterson said the visual evidence shows that about 14 seconds elapsed between shots fired by Van Dyke. McDonald fell on the sidewalk 1.6 seconds after the first shot, he said.
During Mr. Patterson's testimony, members of the jury also saw a video of an FBI "firing rate" test that generally reflected the conditions of McDonald's shootings. When this shooter fired 16 rounds within 14 seconds at a distance of about 10 and a half feet, as Van Dyke did, the firing rate was "deliberate" and "methodical", said Patterson.
"He took his time to aim for every shot," Patterson testified.
In cross-examination, Herbert attempted to raise a doubt in the mind of the jury as to the competence of Patterson's testimony. He noted that even Patterson could not tell, from his analysis of the video on the dashcam, that every bullet had hit McDonald's or the place where she had hit.
The jury, however, heard Wednesday Chief Cook's Chief Medical Examiner that each of the 16 strokes had hit McDonald's. The jurors were also shown photos of 24 entrance and exit wounds on the teen's bullet-ridden body.
The prosecution ended his trial by calling Chicago resident Jose Torres, the last of his 24 witnesses. Torres, who witnessed the shootings while driving his son, Xavier, to the hospital, testified that he had an unobstructed view of McDonald's as the teenager walked down the street. His son gave similar testimony earlier in the week.
McDonald, the eldest of the Torres, told the jurors, had his hands at his side and was moving away from the officers in the seconds leading up to the shooting. The officers shouted at McDonald, who turned his head and looked at them before gunfire broke out, Torres said.
Torres testified to having heard more shots after McDonald had fallen on the street than when he was standing. He was not sure how many bullets had been fired, said Torres, but it was "enough to annoy me".
"Why are they still shooting at him while he was down?"
Torres resisted his cross-examination while Randy Rueckert, one of Van Dyke's lawyers, hinted that a squad vehicle had stopped in front of his vehicle, blocking his vision of the shots.
"You are confused," Torres replied after Rueckert asked him about the number of police squads he had seen that night and their direction. "I do not understand what you are trying to achieve.
"There was no other vehicle in my line of sight," he continued. "I had a clear view of Laquan McDonald's."
Rueckert did not provide any evidence that Torres's opinion was blocked and promptly ended his interrogation.
Although they witnessed McDonald's assassination, Torres and his son were chased out by the police and never made a statement that night, the Tribune reported.
Torres contacted the city's agency investigating the police shootings after hearing reports that police claimed that McDonald had stabbed officers. In an interview with the City Inspector General's office, Mr. Torres stated that he contacted the man because he had two sons close to McDonald's age and that he had the impression that justice was diverted.
"I could not live with myself," Torres told investigators. "If something like that happened to my kids, I'd like someone to come say something."
The jurors were not informed of Torres' efforts to bring the shots to the attention of municipal officials.
After the charge was laid, Herbert argued outside the presence of the jurors that the state had not fulfilled its burden of proof and asked Judge Vincent Gaughan to completely get rid of the case – a request routine rarely accepted.
The defense argued that the prosecutors had not proved anything about Van Dyke's state of mind when he fired his gun and that the officer's shooting was legal because McDonald was fleeing a lawful arrest. Prosecutors countered by saying that it was clear that Van Dyke knew that it could hurt McDonald's when he was fired.
"The defendant was not justified in drawing one of the 16 rounds," said Attorney Joseph Cullen. "Whenever he shot, it became even less necessary."
Gaughan quickly rejected the defense's request.
After Gaughan announced his decision, Van Dyke's wife, Tiffany, began crying in the courtroom. Van Dyke, who was smiling after the suspension of the court, saw her crying and entered the gallery to comfort her. He was told that it was very rare for the judges to acquit the accused during the trial and that the decision was not an indication of the jury's final verdict.
The couple, both wearing bulletproof vests, left the court a few minutes later while holding hands.
Van Dyke's lawyers will begin submitting their self-defense case on Monday.
Jason Meisner of Chicago Tribune contributed.
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