A police officer who fatally shot a handcuffed man won’t face criminal charges after a grand jury concluded Wednesday that the suspect was armed with a handgun police missed while patting him down.
The grand jury heard from 45 witnesses and reviewed a Georgia Bureau of Investigation report of more than 2,000 pages in the shooting of 29-year-old Charles Smith last fall, Chatham County District Attorney Meg Heap said.
“I believe the decision the grand jury made should lay this to rest,” Heap told reporters at a courthouse news conference.
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Georgia Department of Corrections records show Smith had been released from prison on July 9, 2013, a little more than a year before he was killed. Smith served less than two years of a five-year sentence for aggravated assault, cocaine possession, and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.
It was Smith’s third time serving in a Georgia prison. The previous sentences were for theft.
