On a Thursday afternoon in April 2016, a 24-year-old man named Ashtian Barnes was driving his girlfriend's rental car on the Sam Houston Tollway in Harris County, Texas, when he was pulled over by a traffic enforcement officer. The officer, Roberto Felix Jr., stopped Barnes because the license plate of the rental car had been linked to toll violations by another driver. About three minutes into the stop, Barnes began to drive away. Felix reacted by jumping onto the door sill of the car with his gun drawn. Within two seconds, perceiving a threat to himself as the car accelerated, Felix fatally shot Barnes.
The offenses that led to the traffic stop, which had not even been committed by Barnes, were trivial, and Felix himself created the danger to which he responded by killing Barnes. That use of deadly force was plainly unreasonable, Barnes' mother, Janice Hughes Barnes, argued in a federal civil rights lawsuit against Felix.
