A sheriff’s deputy in Georgia will not be charged for fatally shooting a Black man during a traffic stop that turned violent in 2023, officials said on Tuesday. The man who was killed, Leonard Cure, 53, had been wrongfully imprisoned in Florida for 16 years.
The Camden County Sheriff’s Office said in a post on social media that the district attorney for the Brunswick Judicial District, Keith Higgins, had concluded that the use of force by the deputy, Staff Sgt. Buck Aldridge, was “objectively reasonable.”
“The pursuit of criminal charges, therefore, is not warranted,” he said.
Mr. Higgins, who could not be reached on Wednesday, told The Associated Press that the deputy was “overpowered” during the stop. His announcement followed an investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.
Mr. Cure had been exonerated and released from prison three years before the fatal traffic stop. The attorneys for his family, Benjamin Crump and Harry Daniels, said in a statement that the announcement demonstrated “a devastating failure of justice, sending the message that law enforcement officers can take a life without consequence.”
“Leonard Cure was a man who had already fought so hard to reclaim his life after a wrongful conviction, only to have it stolen from him again,” the attorneys said in the statement. “His family will not stop fighting for accountability, and neither will we.”
On Oct. 16, 2023, Mr. Cure, 53, was traveling to his home outside of Atlanta, Ga., after visiting his mother in South Florida, when Sergeant Aldridge stopped him on Interstate 95, not far from the state line.
The Camden County Sheriff’s Office said that Mr. Cure was pulled over for driving more than 100 miles per hour in a 70 m.p.h. zone. It later released camera footage of the encounter, showing Mr. Cure saying that he had done nothing wrong and pulling his arm away from the deputy.
After Sergeant Aldridge told Mr. Cure that he was being arrested because of speeding and reckless driving, they continued to argue and Mr. Cure refused to put his hands behind his back, according to the footage.
The footage also showed the deputy using his Taser on Mr. Cure. The two struggled, with their arms wrapped around each other. The footage shows Mr. Cure grabbing the deputy’s face, pushing his head and body back and cursing at him, while Sergeant Aldridge hit him with a baton. The sergeant then shot Mr. Cure.
After the shooting, Mr. Cure’s family and attorneys said that he might have been triggered by the encounter after having been wrongfully imprisoned.
He had been convicted in 2003 and sentenced to life in prison, based on prior convictions, for an armed robbery at a Walgreens in Broward County, Fla. But in 2020, he was exonerated and released on a finding of “actual innocence,” according to the Innocence Project of Florida.
“This fight is not just for Leonard’s family — it is for every family who has suffered due to unchecked police violence and a chronic lack of accountability,” his family’s lawyers said in the statement. “We will not let this grave injustice be forgotten.”
After the shooting, Sergeant Aldridge was placed on leave for about two months before he returned to work in the sheriff office’s administrative division, according to his attorney, Adrienne Browning.
“We’re happy he’ll be able to continue to serve the citizens of Camden County as he’s done for the past 12 years,” she said.
Mr. Cure’s attorneys announced in December 2023 that the family was suing Sergeant Aldridge, whom they said had been fired from Georgia police department in 2017 after throwing a woman to the ground during a traffic stop and handcuffing her. The lawsuit also names Camden County and Sheriff Jim Proctor as defendants.
The post Georgia Sheriff Deputy Will Not Be Charged in Shooting of Black Man appeared first on New York Times.
