Former police officer Adam Coy found guilty of murdering unarmed black man Andre Hill
Coy told jurors he thought Hill had a gun when he shot him four times as he left a friend’s garage in December 2020, and said he “was horrified” when he found out it was a set of keys.
A former police officer faces at least 15 years in prison after he was found guilty of the murder of an unarmed black man in the US.
Adam Coy spent nearly 20 years with the Columbus police force in Ohio but was sacked after killing Andre Hill in December 2020.
Hill, who was holding keys and a mobile phone rather than the weapon Coy thought, was shot four times by the former officer in a garage in the city.
Coy, 48, told jurors he believed Hill, 47, was holding a silver revolver and he “was going to die”.
He “was horrified”, he said tearfully, after he checked Hill’s body and saw the keys, and realised his mistake.
Coy was found guilty by a jury on all three counts: murder, reckless homicide, and felonious assault, NBC, Sky’s US partner said.
His lawyer Mark Collins said Coy, who is being treated for Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of cancer, was devastated by the verdict, and later promised to appeal.
Hill’s death came seven months after the killing of another unarmed black man, George Floyd, in Minneapolis, sparking the Black Lives Matter nationwide campaign for racial justice.
What happened in moments before Hill was killed
Police body camera footage showed Hill coming out of the garage of a friend’s house holding up a mobile phone in his left hand, with his right hand not visible, seconds before he was fatally shot by Coy at around 1.30am on 22 December 2020.
Coy, who was answering a report of a vehicle being turned on and off, had ordered Hill to leave the garage of a house he thought was being burgled, but where Hill was in fact a guest of the homeowner.
It took officers at the scene almost 10 minutes before they began to help Hill, who lay bleeding on the garage floor. He was pronounced dead at a hospital.
Multi-million dollar settlement
Columbus later reached a $10m (£7.7m) settlement with Hill’s family, the largest in city history.
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The city’s council also passed Andre’s Law, which requires police officers to give immediate medical attention to an injured suspect.
Prosecutors said Hill had followed the officer’s commands and was never a threat to Coy.
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Franklin County assistant prosecutor Anthony Pierson said: “We’re taught, ‘Do what the cops tell you to do and you can survive that encounter,’. That’s not what happened here.”
Shawna Barnett, one of Hill’s sisters, said: “It’s been way too long, but I’m glad it’s over. It’s time to stop. It’s time to make everything fair.”
More than three dozen complaints had been made against Coy since he joined the department in 2002, records showed, but all but a few were marked “unfounded” or “not sustained.”
