Trial begins for Charlotte officer who killed Jonathan Ferrell while he was seeking help

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The trial has began for officer Randall Kerrick, who fatally shot Jonathan Ferrell, while seeking help.

Kerrick shot eight rounds at the fallen body of the unarmed former college football player who had knocked on the door of a house in an unfamiliar neighborhood seeking help after a car crash.

The fatal shooting happened in September 2013 amid the beginning of the national debate over the deaths of young black men that followed the killing of Trayvon Martin in 2012, but preceded the deaths of black men at the hands of law officers in Ferguson, Mo., Baltimore, North Charleston, S.C., Staten Island and other places.

A lawyer for Officer Kerrick said the shooting was due to bad decisions made by Mr. Ferrell, who, he said, had been drinking and smoking marijuana, and had behaved aggressively when he knocked on a stranger’s door after crashing his fiancée’s car.

Prosecutors, on the other hand, are portraying Mr. Ferrell as a soft-spoken young man who had been out with friends and was simply looking for help.

What prosecutor’s say what happened that night:

On Sept. 14, 2013, Mr. Ferrell crashed a car on a dark stretch of road outside Charlotte. After freeing himself by kicking out the back windshield, he walked to a nearby home and knocked on the door to ask for help around 2:30 a.m. The woman living there, Sarah McCartney, who was home with her 1-year-old son, believing he was trying to break in, triggered a burglar alarm and called the police. Officer Kerrick arrived with two other officers 11 minutes later. Soon after, he fired 12 rounds at Mr. Ferrell, hitting him 10 times — eight of them while he was on the ground — and killing him on the spot.

Prosecutors say that Ferrell ran fearing for his life after another officer aimed a taser at him. Mr. Ferrell ducked between two cars, where Officer Kerrick was standing. Officer Kerrick then fired four times at him. Both fell down, and Officer Kerrick continued to fire at Mr. Ferrell’s now lifeless body.

The defense rejected that account, stating that Mr. Ferrell attacked Officer Kerrick even after being shot several times, climbing on top of him and striking the officer’s face until he was subdued.

Officer Kerrick, who has been suspended without pay, was charged quickly after the shooting. But it took a second grand jury to send him to trial after a first declined to indict.

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