North Charleston’s mayor announced a state murder charge against white policeman Michael Slager on Tuesday, after a video surfaced showing the officer shooting and killing an unarmed running black man in the back.
Slager, 33, had said earlier he feared for his life after Walter Scott, 50, took his stun gun during a scuffle after a traffic stop on Saturday. A video, however, shows the officer firing eight times at Scott’s back as he fled, with the latter man apparently unarmed.
North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey said at a Tuesday news conference that Slager had made a “bad decision.”
“When you’re wrong, you’re wrong,” Summey said, as reported by The Post and Courier, South Carolina. “If you make a bad decision, [I] don’t care if you’re behind the shield or just a citizen on the street, you have to live by that decision.”
The mayor said that the case could have ended differently if it weren’t for the footage.
“Without the video … it would be difficult for us to ascertain exactly what did occur,” Summey said. “We want to thank the young person who came forward … because it has helped us resolve the issue.”
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