Police Officer Is Guilty of Manslaughter in Shooting of Man Holding Taser

A Fatal Encounter: The Shooting of Presley Eze and Its Aftermath

On August 2, 2022, a routine encounter between a police officer and a man at a Chevron gas station in Las Cruces, New Mexico, escalated into a fatal shooting that would draw widespread attention and spark debates about police use of force. Officer Brad Lunsford, a white police officer, shot Presley Eze, a 36-year-old Black man, in the head at point-blank range during a scuffle. The incident, which began over an unpaid beer, ended in tragedy, leaving Eze’s family and community grappling with grief and demanding justice.Prosecutors said that Eze, who was unarmed, had been involved in a struggle with Lunsford and another officer after grabbing the second officer’s Taser during the altercation. While Lunsford’s defense team argued that the shooting was justified, claiming Eze posed an imminent threat, the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office maintained that the use of deadly force was unnecessary. The case ultimately went to trial, where a jury convicted Lunsford of manslaughter, marking a rare instance of accountability for a police officer involved in a fatal shooting.

The Trial and the Debate Over Use of Force

The trial of Officer Brad Lunsford lasted eight days, with both sides presenting conflicting arguments about whether the shooting of Presley Eze was justified. Lunsford’s lawyer, Jose Coronado, argued that Eze had posed a direct threat to the other officer by holding a Taser just inches from his face, with his finger on the trigger. Coronado emphasized that Lunsford, a veteran of the Las Cruces Police Department and an Army veteran with two tours in Iraq, had acted to protect his colleague, stating, “You can’t react. You have to act.”Experts hired by the defense supported this claim, concluding that the use of force was necessary under the circumstances.However, prosecutors countered that the Taser was never activated or deployed, and that Eze could have been subdued using less lethal methods. The Attorney General’s Office argue