The Los Angeles district attorney has filed manslaughter charges against a former sheriff’s deputy who fatally shot an unarmed man in 2019, an extremely rare prosecution for an on-duty officer killing in the US.
Andrew Lyons, 37, is facing charges of voluntary manslaughter and two counts of assault with a semiautomatic firearm for the 6 June 2019 killing of Ryan Twyman, in Willowbrook in south LA, the district attorney’s office announced on Thursday.
Video of Twyman’s killing, which happened in under a minute, appeared to show two sheriff’s deputies driving up to an apartment complex and getting out of their car with guns pointed at a parked vehicle. As the officers approached, the car appeared to reverse, and both deputies fired at the vehicle. They continued shooting from a distance as the car rolled. Lyons returned to his car, opened the trunk, grabbed a larger rifle and continued shooting at the motionless car.
The deputies fired a total of 34 rounds, and Twyman, who was in the driver’s seat, was killed. The sheriff’s department terminated Lyons after the killing, according to the Los Angeles Times. The second officer who fired at Twyman was not charged.
The killing of Twyman, a 24-year-old father of three, intensified scrutiny of the sheriff’s department and raised fresh questions about its high number of police killings and allegations of racial profiling.
Charges such as the ones brought against Lyons are a rare occurrence in the US, where police rarely face criminal charges for on-duty killings. Many state laws dictate that deadly force is justified and lawful when officers say they feared for their lives, and juries have been hesitant to condemn officers’ decisions.
Police fatally shoot more than 1,000 people across the country each year, and a recent Washington Post analysis found that there was a rise in killings in 2021. Less than 2% of fatal shootings by officers result in charges, experts estimate, and one analysis found that just 5% of officers charged for killings ultimately face murder convictions.
George Gascón, the LA district attorney, was elected in 2020 on promises of holding police accountable, taking over the largest local prosecutor’s office in the country and becoming one of the most prominent district attorneys championing progressive policies. He ousted an incumbent who faced weekly protests from Black Lives Matter LA for failing to charge officers for killings. The charges against Lyons mark the first by Gascón for an on-duty killing by police, though he filed assault charges against an officer last year who shot and injured a civilian.
“Protecting public safety is the highest responsibility for the entire law enforcement community. That extends first and foremost to those sworn to protect it,” Gascón said in a statement on Thursday. “Policing is a difficult and trying job, but it does not excuse anyone from accountability under the law – especially when a human life is lost.”
“Finally, I can see that there is a light at the end of the tunnel for justice for Ryan Twyman and our family,” said Chiquita Twyman, Ryan’s sister, on Friday.
“The justice system is tainted and has us Black and brown people feeling like the system doesn’t work for us,” she said. “[The charges] made it feel like it’s possible that someone in the justice system knows that Mr Lyons was wrong and that there needs to be accountability for the murder of my brother. He was negligent that day and had no business being a police officer … We will forever hurt because of his negligence.”
Tyman’s family had advocated for criminal charges for years and had alleged other abuses by the sheriff’s department. Months after the killing, Charles Twyman, Ryan’s father, told the Guardian that harassment from the sheriff’s department (LASD) was “a way of life” in the neighborhood, saying, “They talk about gangs in the inner city. Who is the bigger gang?”
In an ACLU report published last year, the Twyman family also alleged that the sheriff’s department frequently harassed them in retaliation for speaking out – showing up at family events without cause, for example.
LASD declined to comment on the claims at the time and did not respond to a request for comment on Friday.
Lyons, 37, was scheduled for arraignment on Friday. It was not immediately clear if he had a lawyer.
