District Attorney: No Charges for Orange County Deputy Who Shot Suspect in August

After reviewing the case of an officer-involved shooting in Orange County from August, the local district attorney announced on Wednesday his office is not pursuing charges.

Jeff Nieman — who is the district attorney for District 18 covering Orange and Chatham counties — and his office shared a press release detailing his assessment of a sheriff’s deputy’s non-fatal shooting of Derick Williams while serving an arrest warrant on August 25. The message said while the shooting was “a tragic event,” it concluded “the use of deadly force on this occasion was lawful and reasonable.”

While the initial alert from the Orange County Sheriff’s Office about the shooting had few details, Nieman’s office’s letter to Sheriff Charles Blackwood and the State Bureau of Investigation shed more light onto the incident. Law enforcement had an arrest warrant out on Williams for a felony charge of intimidating a witness, misdemeanor harassing phone calls, and misdemeanor cyberstalking — stemming from him allegedly sending a message to a victim saying “I told you drop the charges or I’m going to have a shootout with the police and die,” accompanied by a photo of Williams holding a gun.

On August 25, multiple Orange County Sheriff’s deputies and patrol cars arrived to Williams’ residence on Carolina Loop to make an arrest. Deputy Brandon Kern drove his marked patrol vehicle to St. Mary’s Road, which is the street toward the back of the house, and ultimately saw a man later identified as Williams. When Williams saw the patrol car, according to the letter, he pointed a handgun at Kern and tried to fire. After the gun malfunctioned, Kern exited his car and Williams began running up a residence’s driveway. The report said Kern “gave multiple verbal commands for Mr. Williams to drop the gun,” during which Williams reportedly tried to fire the gun again and experienced another jam. After seeing the second attempt to fire, Kern then shot “several rounds” at Williams, striking him three times.

The report said sheriff deputies on scene administered aid to Williams until EMS arrived and he was transported to a nearby hospital treatment for care.

In North Carolina, district attorney office are required to complete an investigative file on officer-involved shooting cases to determine whether charges are warranted. If they conclude that an officer’s conduct was potentially unlawful, then the case is submitted to a grand jury. The office’s report also says that the choice to not file criminal charges does not mean responses were “handled appropriately from an administrative or tactical viewpoint,” but instead that there is “not a reasonable likelihood of proving criminal charges beyond a reasonable doubt.”

With the district attorney’s office’s review being complete, the cases against Williams can proceed in both Orange and Wake counties. In Orange, he faces a charge of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill a law enforcement officer, as well as also unrelated charges to resisting an officer and marijuana possession. Williams remains in custody of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office and is held at Central Prison.

Photo via the Orange County Sheriff’s Office.

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District Attorney: No Charges for Orange County Deputy Who Shot Suspect in August

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