HARTFORD, Conn. – A Connecticut state trooper who fired seven shots into a vehicle after a chase in January 2020 and killed a man was charged with manslaughter on Wednesday, authorities said.
Brian D. North surrendered to authorities on Tuesday evening, The Associated Press reported. He was charged after an investigation that took more than two years found that the trooper’s shooting was unjustified.
Robert J. Devlin Jr., the state’s inspector general, found that the use of deadly force was not justified, The New York Times reported.
“At the time Trooper North fired his weapon, neither he nor any other person was in imminent danger of serious injury or death from a knife attack at the hands of Soulemane,” Devlin wrote in a 133-page report. “Further, any belief that persons were in such danger was not reasonable.”
North, who is white, was charged with first-degree manslaughter with a firearm by the state inspector general’s office in the shooting of Mubarak Soulemane, a 19-year-old Black man, on Jan. 15, 2020, according to The Connecticut Post. He was released after posting $50,000 bail and is due to appear in Milford Superior Court on May 3, the newspaper reported.
Soulemane was fatally shot at the end of a chase in a stolen car, the Hartford Courant reported. Footage from the scene shows troopers and a West Haven police officer advance on the vehicle after it was stopped and blocked by police cars, the newspaper reported.
The footage shows North firing into the vehicle after the trooper allegedly saw Soulemane with a knife, according to the Courant. North told officials he believed Soulemane was going to attack other officers, the AP reported.
Soulemane’s family, the NAACP and other groups said North should not have shot Soulemane because police had him surrounded and he could not escape.
“My initial reaction was that I was shocked because usually when we come across situations such as this, usually officers walk away with no consequences,” Scot X. Esdaile, president of the Connecticut State Conference of the NAACP, told the Post. “We’ve seen this time and time and time again — this particular time I was shocked.
“It seems like we have a little promise here that we’re starting to move in the right direction. I know this is a very dark tunnel for the family, it seems like this is a little light in the tunnel.”
Devlin concluded in his report that neither North nor two other officers outside the car were in imminent danger of having deadly force used against them, the Post reported.
“Although (Soulemane) held a knife in his right hand, he was not using the knife against them nor presenting any imminent threat to do so,” Devlin wrote.
Officials with the state police said they have put North on paid administrative leave, adding that his “police powers have been suspended pending criminal proceedings,” according to the Times.
“No trooper ever intends to take the life of someone else; we don’t have the desire to,” Andrew Matthews, executive director of the Connecticut State Police Union, said at a news conference Wednesday. “And I don’t think — we don’t think that was the intent in this case.
“Trooper North made a split-second decision during some very unusual and very difficult circumstances.”
