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Governor Virginia commits the sentence for the officer who killed an unarmed man suspected of shopping

Governor Virginia commits the sentence for the officer who killed an unarmed man suspected of shopping

The parents of Timothy McCree Johnson, Melissa Johnson, Center, and Timothy Walker, left reporters together with lawyer Carl Crews, right, outside the Police headquarters in Fairfax County, Wednesday, March 22, 2023, in Fairfax, Virginia, after watching the video of their son, at the death of death at the hands of the police. (AP Photo/Matthew Barakat)

On March 2, the Republican governor of Virginia Glenn Youngkin made a condemnation of a former police sergeant in Fairfax County, Wesley Shifflet, who faded an unarmed man suspected of shopping sunglasses in 2023.

The victim, Timothy Johnson, 37, was suspected of shopping, a nonviolent crime, from a Nordstrom store in Tysons Corner Mall in Northern Virginia. Shifflet has received a three -year -old wrist sentence for the offense of recklessly managing a firearm just two days before the sentence was eliminated.

After condemning the officer’s sentence, Youngkin declared in a statement: “I am convinced that the imprisonment of the incarceration court is unfair and violates the foundation stone of our justice system – that the persons located similarly receive proportional sentences.”

“To apply the law, this tells them that they have a governor who has their backs,” said Caleb Kershner, Shifflet’s lawyer. During Shifflett’s trial, Kershner advanced the statement that the police should be given the right to pull first and ask questions after: “A police officer is authorized – and trained – to use lethal force when he reasonably believes that he is in danger of bad evil or death. And that’s exactly what happened in this incident. ”

The prosecutor in the trial of Shifflelet, Steve Descano, denounced Youngkin’s decision, saying: “This is an insult to all the virgins who appreciate an untouched system.” The shooting was more precisely called an “execution” by Johnson’s family’s lawyer, Carl Crews, who said: “He could have been detained without a blow being fired. Several police officers were present. This could have been done. “