South Carolina Shooting

In South Carolina, April 7th, 2015 the shooting of an unarmed black man by a white police officer occured. The Associated Press erroneously reported that Walter Scott was honorably discharged from the Coast Guard. Scott was granted a lesser discharge, known as a general discharge under honorable conditions, because of a drug-related incident.

The white South Carolina police officer who claimed he killed a black man in self-defense has been fired and faces murder charges after a bystander's video recorded him firing eight shots at the man's back as he ran away.

A video of the shooting released to news media outlets shows the officer firing eight shots at Scott's back as Scott is running away. Scott falls on the eighth shot, fired after a brief pause. The video then shows the officer slowly walking toward him, and ordering him to put his hands behind his back. When Scott doesn't move, Slager pulls his arms back and cuffs his hands. Then he walks briskly back to where he fired the shots, picks up an object, and returns the 30 feet or so back to Scott before dropping the object by Scott's feet.

Slager's then-attorney David Aylor had released a statement Monday saying the officer felt threatened and that Scott was trying to grab Slager's stun gun. Aylor dropped Slager as a client after the video surfaced. Attorney L. Chris Stewart, who came to North Charleston a day after the shooting to represent the family, said the video forced authorities to act quickly and decisively, and he called the person who made the video a hero.

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