A judge dismissed all charges Tuesday against a Philadelphia police officer who fatally shot a driver last month.
Mark Dial shot 27-year-old Eddie Irizarry through the rolled-up driver’s side window of Irizarry’s sedan during a traffic stop on Aug. 14.
Dial and his partner, Officer Michael Morris, say they had been pursuing Irizarry for driving erratically and turning the wrong way down a one-way street. Morris testified that Irizarry had a knife in his hand and had started to raise it as the officers approached.
During a hearing, Dial’s lawyers argued he acted in self-defense because he believed the knife Irizarry had was a gun. Brian McMonagle, one of his lawyers, said his client was justified in shooting as he was trying to take cover and had feared for his life during the incident.
“Every tragedy is not a crime,” McMonagle said.
Initial statements from the police department said Dial shot the driver outside the vehicle after he “lunged at” police with a knife, but the department later walked back these statements.
Still, McMonagle said the charges, which included manslaughter, official oppression and four other counts, never should have been filed given the evidence.
“I agree with you 100 percent,” Judge Wendy Pew responded before tossing all charges Tuesday, per the Associated Press.
Then stop the fucken car and maybe, just maybe, don’t pull out a fucken knife on an officer. But yeah, let’s pretend this guy was some innocent person. The news media will show pictures of him in his sunday best when he was 10 and hadn’t become a total become a piece of shit yet. His grandma will be on the news crying about “my baby!”. Yawn. We’ve all seen this shit before and the excuses run thin.
“Stop the fucken car” - the car was stopped when the officer shot him (he was shot 7 seven seconds after the officer got out of his patrol car according to the official report).
“Don’t pull out a fucken knife on an officer.” - the man was still inside his car with the doors closed and windows rolled up and as per Pennsylvania law, it is legal to have a knife out and in the open in your vehicle. Assuming the man intended to use the knife against the officer, I beg you to give a scenario in which the man could stab his knife through the car door and injur the officer. If you say something like “well, he could have gotten out of his car and stabbed the cop hur dur dur.” Then just save your breath. We could argue all day about what could have happened. The fact is, it didn’t. The man didn’t get out of his car to attack the officer with the knife, and the officer wasn’t in danger. End of story.
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