Filmed in 1.6 seconds: Video raises questions about how soldier escaped charges in connection with black man’s death

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) – Julian Lewis didn’t stop to see a Georgia State Patrol cruiser flashing blue lights behind him on a rural highway. He still didn’t stop as he reached out the window and turned onto the dark dirt road because the soldier blared his siren.

Five minutes after a chase that began due to a broken taillight, a 60-year-old black man was dead – shot in the brow by a white soldier who fired a single bullet just seconds after forcing Lewis right into a ditch. Trooper Jake Thompson insisted he pull the trigger while Lewis revved the engine of his Nissan Sentra and jerked the steering wheel as if to mow him down.

“I had to shoot that man,” Thompson might be heard telling a supervisor in video captured on a dashboard camera on the shooting scene in rural Screven County, halfway between Savannah and Augusta. “And I’m just scared.”

But recent details of the investigation obtained by The Associated Press and never-before-seen dashcam video of the August 2020 shooting have raised recent questions about how the officer escaped prosecution with only a signed promise never to work in law enforcement again . Use-of-force experts who reviewed the footage for the AP said the shooting seemed to be unjustified.

The investigative file obtained by the AP provides probably the most detailed account of the case yet, including documents explaining why the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said the 27-year-old soldier’s version of events didn’t match the evidence. For example, an inspection of Lewis’ automobile revealed that the accident had disconnected the vehicle’s battery and rendered it immobile.

Footage of the chase was never made public. It was first obtained by the authors of a brand new book on racial and economic inequality titled “Fifteen Cents on the Dollar: How Americans Created the Black-White Wealth Gap.” Louise Story and Ebony Reed shared the video with the AP, which verified its authenticity and obtained additional documents under Georgia’s open records law.

The footage doesn’t include visuals of the particular shooting, which took place outside the camera’s field of view. However, it does show the important thing final moments in which Thompson performs a police maneuver to cause Lewis’ automobile to fall right into a ditch. The officer’s cruiser then pulls up parallel to Lewis’ vehicle and Thompson’s voice barks, “Hey, hands up!” Before he can finish his warning, a shot is heard.

Documents show Thompson fired just 1.6 seconds after the cruiser stopped.

“This guy just came out to shoot” and didn’t give Lewis “even enough time to react” to his orders, said Andrew Scott, a former police chief in Boca Raton, Florida, who wrote a dissertation on police chases.

“This goes beyond a stupid mistake,” added Charles “Joe” Key, a former Baltimore police lieutenant and use-of-force expert who has consulted on hundreds of such cases.

Key also disagreed with the maneuver to disable Lewis’ vehicle, saying it was also unjustified. He considered Thompson’s claim that he fired since the engine was revving at high speeds to be “total nonsense”.

“I’m not a fan of running from the police,” Key said. “But that doesn’t put him in the category of people deserving of being shot by the police.”

Thompson was fired and arrested on murder charges per week after the Aug. 7, 2020, shooting that occurred during summer protests following the police killings of George Floyd and other Black people. The soldier was denied bail and spent greater than 100 days in jail.

But in the tip, Thompson was released without trial. A 2021 state grand jury declined to bring an indictment. The district attorney overseeing the case closed it last fall when federal prosecutors also ruled out civil rights charges.

At the identical time, the U.S. Department of Justice quietly entered right into a non-prosecution agreement with Thompson, barring him from working in law enforcement again – a move that was extremely unusual and brought little comfort to Lewis’ family.

“It’s not good enough,” said Lewis’ son, Brook Bacon. “I thought that the shortcomings that occurred at the state level would be more closely scrutinized at the federal level, but that clearly isn’t the case.”

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The state of Georgia paid a $4.8 million settlement to Lewis’ family in 2022 to avoid the lawsuit.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Georgia, which reached a non-prosecution agreement with Thompson, declined to debate the matter, saying only that the Justice Department had communicated with the Lewis family “in accordance with the law and Justice Department policy.”

District Attorney Daphne Totten didn’t reply to requests for comment. Neither Thompson nor his attorney Keith Barber would discuss the case.

Because Georgia law doesn’t require troopers to make use of body cameras, dashcam footage is the one video of the shooting.

“This is a heartbreaking case that shines a light on the complexities and difficulties black families face in interacting with the justice system,” said Reed, a former AP journalist and one among the authors who first obtained the footage.

Lewis worked odd jobs as a carpenter and handyman. Relatives said he helped put a brand new roof and façade on a neighborhood church, and repaired the homes’ plumbing and electrical systems. He often charged family and friends only for the materials.

“He was just a good man with a kind heart,” said Tonia Moore, one among Lewis’ sisters. “Everyone has flaws”.

Lewis also struggled with drugs and alcohol. He served time in prison for cocaine possession and multiple DUI offenses. After the shooting, blood tests showed alcohol, cocaine and methamphetamine in his system.

Thompson, who had been policing Georgia highways for six years before the shooting, was described in a performance review as “hardworking and aggressive.” Personnel records show that he was in charge of DUI arrests and preferred to work at night to extend his probabilities of catching impaired drivers.

Days after the shooting, Thompson told GBI investigators that he used a tactical maneuver to finish the pursuit – which he estimated had a maximum speed of 65 mph (105 km/h) – out of concern that the pursuit was approaching a more populated area. It acted immediately after Lewis’ automobile rolled without stopping at an intersection with a stop sign.

Thompson said that when he got out of the patrol automobile next to Lewis’ automobile in the ditch, he heard the Nissan’s engine “revving at a high rate of speed.”

“It appeared to me that the perpetrator was trying to use his vehicle to hurt me,” Thompson said in an audio recording of the interview with the GBI obtained by the AP. He said he fired “out of fear for my life and safety.”

In the dashcam footage, a brief sound like a running engine might be heard just before Thompson shouted a warning and fired his shot. Less than two minutes later, the soldier might be heard saying, “Jesus Christ! He almost ran me over.

According to GBI case records, Thompson fired on the open driver’s side window of Lewis’ automobile, lower than 10 feet away.

Agents on the scene found that Lewis’ front tires were pointing away from the trooper’s cruiser. They also determined that Lewis’ automobile had no power after the Nissan hit the ditch. Lifting the hood, they found that the battery had fallen on its side after the attachment had been broken. One of the battery cables was loose and the engine air filter housing was partially open.

Investigators later conducted a field test of Lewis’ automobile, during which they connected the battery and began the engine. When the agent disconnected one among the battery cables, the automobile’s engine immediately stopped. Similarly, opening the air filter cover resulted in engine death.

Because grand jury proceedings are generally secret, it’s unknown why the panel declined to indict Thompson in June 2021. Georgia gives law enforcement officers the prospect to defend themselves before a grand jury, a privilege other defendants should not have.

Totten, the district attorney, selected to not retry, stating in a September 28 letter to the GBI that “no new evidence was presented in this case.”

For Bacon, Lewis’ son, the dearth of charges is an open wound. He worries that nobody will remember what happened, given nearly 4 years have passed and the variety of other people killed by police in questionable circumstances.

“It’s hard for someone to go back that far, especially if they haven’t heard about it to begin with,” he said. “But these problems haven’t gone away.”