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WASHINGTON — A white police officer in North Charleston, S.C., was charged with murder Tuesday after a video surfaced showing him fatally shooting an apparently unarmed black man in the back while the man ran away.
The officer, Michael T. Slager, 33, said he feared for his life because the man took his stun gun in a scuffle after a traffic stop Saturday. A video, however, shows the officer firing eight times as the man — Walter L. Scott, 50 — fled. The North Charleston mayor announced the state charges at a news conference Tuesday evening.
The shooting comes on the heels of high-profile instances of police officers using lethal force in New York; Cleveland; Ferguson, Mo; and elsewhere. The deaths have set off a national debate over whether police are too quick to use force, particularly in cases involving black men.
North Charleston is South Carolina’s third-largest city, with a population of about 100,000. Blacks make up about 47 percent of residents, and whites account for about 37 percent. The city’s police department is about 80 percent white, according to data collected by the Justice Department in 2007, the most recent period available.
“When you’re wrong, you’re wrong,” Mayor Keith Summey said during the news conference. “And if you make a bad decision — don’t care if you’re behind the shield or just a citizen on the street — you have to live by that decision.”
The shooting unfolded after Slager stopped the driver of a Mercedes-Benz with a broken taillight, according to police reports. Scott ran away, and Slager chased him into a grassy lot that abuts a muffler shop. The officer fired his Taser, an electronic stun gun, but it did not stop Scott, according to police reports.
Moments after the struggle, Slager reported on his radio, “Shots fired and the subject is down. He took my Taser,” according to police reports.
But the video, which was taken by a bystander and provided to The New York Times by the Scott family’s lawyer, presents a different account. The video begins in the vacant lot, apparently moments after Slager fired his Taser. Wires, which carry the electrical current from the stun gun, appear to be extending from Scott’s body as the two men tussle and Scott turns to run.
