A Camden County, Georgia, jury acquitted a former Kingsland police officer of voluntary and involuntary manslaughter charges in the fatal shooting of an unarmed Black man fleeing from a traffic stop.
According to News4Jax, Zechariah Presley was still found guilty of violating his oath of office in the June 2018 shooting of Tony Green.
Presley is to be jailed until sentencing on Oct 18. He faces up to five years in prison.
Green’s father, Wayne Anderson, blasted the verdict, insisting: “My son was murdered.”
“The man that murdered my son gets to go home to his sons … and can only possibly serve 1 to 5 (years) for murder,” Anderson added. “This ought to serve notice to a lot of our young Black men and Black men, period, that you can run up and down the football field, you can run on down the courts, you can hit baseballs, you can do it. But at the end of the day, when I see you, they see a Black man.”
The pastor of the church Green attended, Mack De’Von Knight, also took issue with the verdict.
“He admitted that he killed Tony Green in cold blood,” Knight said outside the courthouse. “To me, it’s hunting season for the young Black man and we’re being gunned down in the streets and there’s no repercussions, there’s no consequences for these officers.”
Presley’s body camera was recording the encounter; however, darkness and something covering Presley’s camera obscured the details of what exactly occurred.
Presley testified that Green turned back to face him as he was fleeing, and Presley “feared for his life.” Following a brief struggle, Presley shot Green eight times.