Mecklenburg County’s district attorney has decided two Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police officers were legally justified in fatally shooting Kevin Eugene Boston last summer after he pointed a gun at the officers who approached Boston as a suspect in a theft from a nearby Food Lion.
District Attorney Spencer Merriweather on Tuesday released a 42-page report of his office’s findings, including information from interviews with the police officers and a review of body camera footage. The DA’s report says one of the officers fired first at Boston, conflicting with previous statements from the police department that the officers were returning fire.
Merriweather’s report says Boston refused police commands to drop his weapon, swung his gun as he walked past one of the officers and raised the gun and pointed it “in the direction of” officers Richard Meyer and Erik Torres even after he was shot. Earlier in the encounter, Merriweather’s report says, Boston had briefly pointed his gun at himself, holding it under his chin.
That prompted Meyer and Torres to take cover behind their patrol cars.
After Boston began walking away with the gun in his hand, video showed the officers called out to him to drop the gun and then Torres shot at him. Afterward, Boston “fired his weapon at officers, striking the vehicles that the officers were using as cover,” Merriweather said.
“No available evidence in this case would enable the State to prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that Officers Meyer and Torres did not act in defense of themselves or another,” Merriweather wrote.
“The information relayed to the officers regarding the armed robbery at the grocery store, the body-worn camera videos, the physical evidence at the scene, as well as the statements of both officers, all corroborate that Officers Meyer and Torres were reasonable in their belief that the decedent posed an imminent threat of great bodily harm or death to themselves and the public when they fired their weapons, killing the decedent.”
