Grand Rapids Police Officer Christopher Schurr is being charged with second-degree murder in the shooting death of Patrick Lyoya, Kent County Prosecutor Chris Becker announced on Thursday.
According to Becker, it's a felony offense punishable by up to life in prison with the possibility of parole. He wanted to reiterate that Schurr is presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
Becker said the shooting meets the elements of a second-degree murder charge: First, there was a death, death done by the defendant, and when the killing occurred, the defendant had one of these three states of mind: "Intent to kill, intent to do great bodily harm, or the intent to do an act tha tthe natural tendency of that act would be to cause death or great bodily harm, and finally that the death was not justifiable or excused," Becker said.
"I believe there is a sufficient basis to proceed with one count of second-degree murder," he added.
Lyoya died on April 4 after he was shot in the back of the head by an officer. He was pulled over at the intersection of Griggs and Nelson the city’s southeast side. He was driving the vehicle and there was a passenger.
Schurr, who is white, told Lyoya that he stopped his car because the license plate didn’t match the vehicle. Roughly a minute into the stop, Lyoya began to run after he was asked to produce a driver’s license.
Schurr caught him quickly, and the two struggled across a front lawn before the fatal shot.
An autopsy found he died from a single gunshot wound to the back of the head, and that his blood-alcohol level was more than three times the state’s legal limit of .08.
Becker said that he spoke with Lyoya's family and also had a letter written to them in Swahili to read.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel released this statement after the announcement:
"At the Department of Attorney General, we understand the exceptional resources needed to evaluate police-involved shooting deaths and I commend Prosecutor Becker, his team and the Michigan State Police for the exhaustive review conducted these last two months. We must now respect the judicial process and allow the facts of the case to be presented in court."
Ven Johnson, the attorney for the family, said, "there is no excuse whatsoever for Patrick being shot in back of the head."
He also said there will be no celebrating the charges.
"This family has been devastated," he said.
Prominent Civil Rights Attorney Ben Crump also released this statement:
“We are encouraged by attorney Christopher Becker’s decision to charge Christopher Schurr for the brutal killing of Patrick Lyoya, which we all witnessed when the video footage was released to the public. While the road to justice for Patrick and his family has just begun, this decision is a crucial step in the right direction. Officer Schurr must be held accountable for his decision to pursue an unarmed Patrick, ultimately shooting him in the back of the head and killing him – for nothing more than a traffic stop.”
