A grand jury has declined to indict the Lafayette Police officers who fatally shot Trayford Pellerin outside of a gas station last August. 15th Judicial District Attorney Don Landry says State Police reviewed the incident from every angle available and found the shooting was justifiable.
“If we did not have evidence sufficient to prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt then we are ethically obligated not to charge anyone in the case,” said Landry.
Body camera video shows Pellerin attempting to enter a gas station with a knife. He was repeatedly asked to drop the knife. Two officers also deployed tasers before he was fatally shot.
Landry says Pellerin threatened to stab officers earlier in the incident and those officers showed restraint by waiting as long as they did to shoot him.
“The United States Supreme Court tells us that we need to look at this case from the perspective of a reasonable officer on the scene, rather than with 20-20 hindsight,” said Landry.
Pellerin Family Attorney Ronald Haley says Pellerin had committed no crime other than failing to comply before he was shot to death. He calls the decision extremely disappointing.
“I’m tired of the excuse of failing to comply as a reason to kill black people in this country,” said Haley.
Haley says Pellerin was clearly experiencing a mental health crisis and likely fled from police in part because of where the country was at that point.
“This is at the peak of the summer where we saw Breonna Taylor killed, we saw Ahmaud Arbery killed, where George Floyd happened, where our cities were literally were burning because of the relationship between blacks and law enforcement,” said Haley.
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