Prosecutor Chris Becker announced the indictment Thursday against Grand Rapids officer Christopher Sur, weeks after Loya’s murder following a chaotic April 4 traffic stop. Congolese 26-year-old Lyoya was on the ground when he was killed. The shooting was recorded on video from a passerby. “The death was neither justified nor justified; by self-defense,” Becker said, referring to a second-degree murder. Schurr, who is white, told Lyoya that he stopped his car because the license plate did not match the vehicle. About a minute after the stop, Lyoya started running after being asked for a driver’s license. Schurr caught him quickly and the two of them raced on a front lawn. The officer demanded that Liogia “let go” of Taurus of Sur before firing the deadly shot. Grand Rapids officer Christopher Schurr, who appeared in August 2015, fought with Lyoya during a traffic jam on April 4 before being fatally shot. (Emily Rose Bennett / Grand Rapids Press / The Associated Press) Grand Rapids Police Chief Eric Winstrom posted a video from four different sources on April 13. Lawyers for Liogia’s family described the death as “execution”. Grand Rapids, with a population of about 200,000, is located 260 miles west of Detroit. Schurr has been a police officer since 2015. His staff file shows no complaints of excessive violence, but much praise for stopping traffic and stalking legs that led to arrests and seizures of weapons and drugs. The shooting turned into an immediate crisis for Winstrom, who was commander in Chicago before taking charge of Grand Rapids in early March. At a community forum in April, the leader said he wanted to put more emphasis on officers who know how to reduce heat in tense situations. “I guarantee we can do more,” he said. “Actually, this is one of the things I’ve already done to my colleagues to say, ‘Hi, I need a curriculum, because we’re going to strengthen it.’
