Ohio police officer found guilty of shooting black man holding phone

Andre Hill was holding his phone as he walked toward a police officer when he was fatally shot

A US jury has found a former Ohio police officer guilty four years after he shot and killed a black man holding his keys and phone in his garage.

Officer Adam Coy, who shot Andre Hill four times in 2020, faces at least 15 years in prison after a jury verdict on Monday.

Prosecutors asked for the former officer to be sentenced immediately, but the judge set the sentencing date for November 25.

Coy, who is white and was a police officer in Columbus, Ohio, for 20 years, told jurors he believed Hill was holding a silver revolver.

“I thought I was going to die,” he testified. Coy said it wasn’t until he rolled over Hill’s body and saw the keys that he realized there was no gun there. “At that moment I knew I had made a mistake. I was terrified.”

According to police body camera footage, Hill, 47, was leaving a friend’s garage holding his phone in his left hand while his right hand was not visible, just seconds before he was shot.

It took police ten minutes to help Hill, who lay bleeding on the garage floor. He was pronounced dead in hospital.

Prosecutors argued that Hill, a father and grandfather, followed Coy’s orders and never posed a threat to the police officer.

During the trial, Coy’s lawyers argued that Hill’s lack of a gun was irrelevant because the officer believed his life was in danger. He went to the neighborhood due to complaints about a person in a moving vehicle.

Police shootings

The verdict is the latest in a series of highly controversial incidents in the US involving white officers and black victims. Brett Hankison, a former Kentucky State Police officer, was convicted last week of violating the civil rights of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman whose death during a police raid sparked racial justice protests across the United States in 2020.

Taylor was shot and killed by officers acting on a no-knock warrant.

On Friday, Hankison was convicted of one count of civil rights violations, and a 12-person federal jury found that he used excessive force against Taylor during the raid.

Changes in the police

Coy was fired shortly after the fatal shooting, and the controversy surrounding Hill’s death led to changes in the city’s police force.

The mayor forced the city’s police chief to resign after a series of fatal police shootings involving black men and children.

Columbus later reached a $10 million settlement with Hill’s family, the largest in the city’s history. The Columbus City Council also passed Andre’s Law, which requires police officers to provide immediate medical attention to an injured suspect.

The settlement announcement followed other large payouts by American cities over the killing of Black people by white officers.

The city of Minneapolis has reached a $27 million settlement with George Floyd’s family ahead of the trial of Derek Chauvin, the white former officer charged in Floyd’s death.

The city of Louisville, Kentucky, has agreed to pay Breonna Taylor’s family $12 million and reform police practices.