A police officer in Maryland was charged with murder after authorities say he shot an unarmed man seven times while he had him handcuffed inside his police cruiser.
Owen also faces manslaughter and weapons charges in the shooting of Green, 43, in Temple Hills, Maryland, police said.
“I’m unable to come to our community this evening and provide you with a reasonable explanation for the events that occurred last night,” he told reporters. “I have concluded that what happened last night is a crime.”
Monday, Owen and another officer responded to reports of a car slamming into parked vehicles, CNN affiliate WJLA reported, citing a police spokeswoman.
They believed Green was “under the influence of a substance” and requested a drug recognition expert, police said in a statement. Green was placed in the front seat of the police cruiser while they waited, police said.
They took Green to the front seat of Owen’s police cruiser to wait for the expert, police said.
Owen later got in the driver’s seat of the police car and, at some point, “Green was shot seven times by the officer’s duty weapon,” police said. He was pronounced dead at a hospital.
After the shooting, Owen and the other officer took Green out of the cruiser and offered him aid. He was then taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead, police said.
It’s unclear what led to the shooting.
Owen, a 10-year veteran of the force, was arrested the next day. Defense attorney Jonathon Scruggs did not return CNN’s calls seeking comment in January.
It’s unclear whether he retained an attorney who could comment on the charges.
“There are no circumstances under in which this outcome is acceptable and I want to extend my heartfelt sorrow and sympathies to the Green family,” Stawinski said Tuesday.
Green’s fiancee, Sandra Mathis, questioned what harm Green could have done to the officer while restrained.
“Obviously, he didn’t resist arrest because he was in handcuffs,” she told WJLA. “His life mattered.”
Deborah Jeon, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, condemned the shooting and made a call for full transparency and accountability in the investigation.
“There is no reason why a handcuffed person should ever be shot multiple times by a police officer, let alone shot multiple times inside a patrol car. Anything short of that assessment would just demonstrate complete lack of respect for human life,” the ACLU’s Jeon said.
Video footage of the incident is not available. The officer, unlike some officers in the police department, was not wearing a body camera, Prince George’s County Executive Angela D. Alsobrooks told reporters.
Body cameras are not available for all patrol officers within the county police department but funding is budgeted to equip all of them in the future, Alsobrooks said.
Stawinski explained that seating individuals in the front seat of police cruisers gives officers better control of the person, and has been a practice in the department for years.
Under the department’s policy, officers can seat people in the right front or rear seat depending on whether their police cruisers have a partition. Owen’s vehicle was equipped with a partition, the department said in a statement.