Julian Lewis didn’t pull over for the Georgia State Patrol cruiser flashing its blue lights behind him on a rural highway. He still didn’t stop after pointing a hand out the window and turning onto a darkened dirt road as the trooper sounded his siren.
Five minutes into a pursuit that began over a broken taillight, the 60-year-old Black man was dead — shot in the forehead by the white trooper who fired a single bullet mere seconds after forcing Lewis to crash into a ditch. Trooper Jake Thompson insisted he pulled the trigger as Lewis revved the engine of his Nissan Sentra and jerked his steering wheel as if trying to mow him down.
“I had to shoot this man,” Thompson can be heard telling a supervisor on video recorded by his dash-mounted camera at the shooting scene in rural Screven County, midway between Savannah and Augusta. “And I’m just scared.”
But new investigative details obtained by The Associated Press and the never-before-released dashcam video of the August 2020 shooting have raised fresh questions about how the trooper avoided prosecution with nothing more than a signed promise never to work in law enforcement again. Use-of-force experts who reviewed the footage for AP said the shooting appeared to be unjustified.
Stupidity shouldn’t result in death. And not following the law also shouldn’t result in death as long as lives aren’t actively endangered.
Aside from that, chasing the guy over a broken light was pretty dumb of the cop. Noncooperative vehicles are a BIG hazard to other traffic. Write down the number plate, visit them at home. The taillight will still be broken tomorrow.
We both know he was using the broken tail light as probable cause for a stop. He wanted him to pull over because he suspected he was drunk or on drugs or simply because he was black with a broken tail light.
As soon as the man didn’t pull over the cop got his hackles up and now he was definitely going to stop him. Escalation is the way with cops.