The North Carolina police officer who shot an unarmed former college football player to death in 2013 won't be retried, an official said Friday, a week after a judge declared a mistrial in the case.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer Randall "Wes" Kerrick, 29, killed Jonathan Ferrell, 24, after a traffic accident on Sept. 14, 2013, and was accused of voluntary manslaughter. Kerrick is white; Ferrell was black.
Prosecutors argued Kerrick should have used nonlethal force to subdue Ferrell, a former defensive back for Florida A&M, after Ferrell climbed out of his wrecked car and dragged himself to a nearby house to get help. The woman in the house called 911 to report a possible break-in.
North Carolina senior deputy attorney general Robert Montgomery said the case would not be retried after the jury deadlocked, with eight jurors voting for an acquittal and four for a conviction.
"It is our prosecutors' unanimous belief a retrial will not yield a different result. While our prosecutors tried to seek a conviction, it appears a majority of the jurors did not believe the criminal conviction was the appropriate verdict," Montgomery wrote to a local prosecutor.
RELATED: Judge Declares Mistrial For Police Officer Who Killed Jonathan Ferrell
The charge will be dismissed, he added.
