Ex-Cop Charged With Murder for Shooting Suspect After High-Speed Chase in St. Louis

A former St. Louis cop has been arrested and charged with first-degree murder for the 2011 killing of Anthony Lamar Smith — a case that prompted one of the biggest wrongful police involved death settlements in the city's history.

St. Louis police and the US Marshals arrested Jason Stockley, 35, at his home in Houston Monday for shooting Smith, a 24-year-old black man, more than four years ago. Stockley is currently being held without bail in Harris County, Texas.

The charges come amid heightened scrutiny of police use of excessive force after killings of numerous unarmed black people that triggered protests across the United States over the past two years.

"It's important that people understand that if you commit a crime, and we have the evidence to prove it, it doesn't matter to us what you do for a living," St. Louis Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce, whose office charged Stockley, told the St. Louis Dispatch. "Our job is to hold people accountable if we have the evidence. And in this case, we do."

The 2011 shooting began after Stockley, who is white, and his partner, Officer Brian Bianchi, saw a suspected drug transaction in Jennings, a municipality north of St. Louis. Authorities said that when the officers approached the car on December 11, 2011 and ordered Smith to raise his hands, he allegedly reached under the seat. Officers then fired at the vehicle, triggering a high speed chase.

Stockley was a passenger in the police SUV that chased Smith at speeds reaching 80 miles per hour, a statement from the prosecutor's office said. At one point the vehicle crashed. The officers backed up and then began pursuing Smith again.

A dashcam video recorded Stockley saying that he was "going to kill this motherfucker, don't you know it," according to court documents.

Smith's car began slowing to a stop when Stockley told Bianchi, who was driving, to "hit him right now." The officer complied and rammed Smith's vehicle.

Stockley then got out of his car, walked toward the driver's side of Smith's vehicle, and shot him five times, according to a statement from Joyce's office.

"We believe we have the evidence we need to prove Mr. Stockley's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law," the statement said.

Stockley could not immediately be reached for comment.

Police told the Post-Dispatch at the time that a weapon was recovered from Smith's vehicle after the killing. The prosecutor's office said the only gun recovered from the scene had Stockley's DNA on it.

Prosecutors at the time did not criminally charge Stockley, who left the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department in 2013, the prosecutor's statement said. Additional evidence that was uncovered by a police department and FBI investigation was provided to prosecutors in March and led to Monday's charges, the statement said.

Smith's family settled a federal wrongful death lawsuit with the city over the killing for $900,000 in 2013 — one of the largest such settlement from a police shooting in the city's history.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

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