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White US cop convicted of murdering black teen

Wednesday, 29 August 2018 5:37 AM [ Last Update: Wednesday, 29 August 2018 6:09 AM ]

Jordan Edwards was fatally shot by a white police officer in Texas in 2017. (File photo)

A white US police officer has been found guilty of murder for the shooting death of a 15-year-old African American boy in Texas.

In a rare conviction resulting from a high-profile police shooting case, a Dallas County jury on Tuesday convicted former Texas police officer Roy Oliver of murdering unarmed Jordan Edwards in April of 2017.

The teen was shot multiple times as he and his friends started to drive away from a house party in a car in the Dallas suburb of Balch Springs. They were leaving the party after hearing gunfire, which had come from another nearby location.

Edwards, a freshman honor roll student who was sitting in the front passenger seat, was killed instantly from injuries to his head.

The officer, who was not found guilty of two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon by a public servant, could face between five to 99 years in prison for the murder conviction.

“For an officer to be convicted of murder resulting from an on-duty shooting, the facts of the incident have to be so bizarre that there is no rational explanation for the officer’s actions,” said Philip Stinson, an associate professor of criminal justice at Bowling Green State University who tracks police misconduct.

“I think that shooting into a car full of teenagers as they slowly drive down the street away from the officer fits that pattern.”

Roy Oliver appears in this photo from the Balch Springs Police Department Facebook page, April 1, 2015. (File photo)

Oliver, who joined the police force in 2011, was fired following the shooting, according to Balch Springs Police Chief Jonathan Haber.

Assistant District Attorney Mike Snipes described Oliver as reckless and out of control.

"This guy is an angry, out-of-control walking bomb, a time bomb that went off on April 29, 2017," Snipes told the jury.

US police departments have been under heightened scrutiny in recent years for the disproportionate number of police killings of African Americans.

Numerous demonstrations have been held across the US in recent years following police-involved killings of unarmed African-American men, including Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri; Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Ohio; Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York; and Walter Scott in North Charleston, South Carolina.

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