“This is not a message. It’s just based on the facts and the decision in this case,” Kent County Attorney Christopher Becker told reporters Thursday, referring to the indictment.
Becker said he had spoken to Lioya’s family and sent them a letter to their native Swahili.
Ben Kramb, a lawyer for the Loya family, described the decision as “a step in the right direction” in a statement.
“We are encouraged by the decision of attorney Christopher Becker to charge Christopher Schurr with the brutal murder of Patrick Lyoya, which we all witnessed when the video was released,” Crump said.
“Officer Schurr,” he added, “must be held accountable for his decision to pursue an unarmed Patrick, eventually shooting him in the back of the head and killing him – for nothing more than a traffic stop.”
In a statement, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel praised Becker and state police for “the exhaustive review that has taken place over the past two months.”
“We must now respect the court process and allow the facts of the case to be presented in court,” he added.
Becker said Sur had surrendered and would likely be taken on Friday.
In May, Becker announced that he was seeking guidance from outside experts before deciding whether to charge the officer. The town of Grand Rapids put the officer on paid leave and suspended his police powers after the shooting.
Lyoya, 26, was pulled over by Schurr for an alleged unregistered license plate. Liogia got out of the car and ran. He resisted Schurr’s attempt to arrest him and the officer shot him while the two were on the ground as Schurr fought for control of Lyoya.
Lyoya had three pending warrants when he left Schurr and an autopsy revealed that his blood alcohol level was three times the legal limit.
The deaths sparked protests in Grand Rapids, where other police-resident interactions sparked media scrutiny in a city with a history of tensions between blacks and police.
The shooting prompted the State Civil Rights Service to renew a request for a press and practice investigation from the Department of Justice to the Grand Rapids Police Department, just one month after the new police chief took office.
The county’s medical examiner’s office released the results of his autopsy in early May, and the Grand Rapids Police Department released mission files and reports written by police officers who responded to the shooting in late April.
The movement of the radio, an accompanying logbook with the help of a computer and updated reports of incidents shed some light on the moments before and after the shooting of the policeman in Liogia.
The release of the radio and other files released by the Grand Rapids Police Department show that the officer who shot Liogia told supervisors after the shooting that Liogia “has my Teaser.”
Schurr notified his sender that he had stopped a blackened car around 8:11 a.m. He told the sender that a man was running from the stop about 75 seconds later and asked more officers to respond about two minutes after the stop. Schurr told the sender that he had been “shot” about four minutes after the initial stop. The sender said emergency medical services were on their way about 11 seconds after that.
Lyoya was driving with a revoked license at the time of the traffic stop. His license was revoked in March due to a third conviction for substance abuse within 10 years, according to public records. He had three warrants open at the time of the shutdown, according to a review of CNN state records.
CNN’s Laura Ly, Virginia Langmaid, Pervaiz Shallwani, Samantha Beech, Rob Frehse, Jennifer Henderson, Omar Jimenez, Artemis Moshtaghian, Kristina Sgueglia, Amy Simonson, Laura Studley and Kiely Westhoff contributed to this report.
