Rookie cop who killed sleeping woman while aiming for dog faces trial
A rookie police officer who shot and killed a sleeping Texas woman while aiming for her dog as it charged towards him has been indicted and faces trial.
Former Arlington Police Department officer Ravi Singh faces up to two years in jail if convicted of the killing of homeless woman Margarita ‘Maggie’ Brooks.
The shooting happened when Mr Singh was called out to complete a welfare check on Ms Jones, 30, after she was spotted passed out on a grassy area in the city.
Body cam footage shows he approached Ms Jones on 1 August, 2019, and asked if she was okay.
He then asked if the unrestrained dog belonged to her at which point it ran towards him.
Mr Singh, 27, can be heard saying “Get back” before he fired three shots.
Ms Brooks can immediately be heard in the background saying “What the f***. Oh my God – the police shot me.”
She was taken to Medical City Arlington Hospital but later died form her injuries, while the 40-pound lab mix was grazed by the bullet but not seriously hurt.
Ms Brooks was survived by three children, aged nine, 11 and 13.
“Rule number one, don’t kill the citizens,’ her father, Troy Brooks, told Fox4.
“It’s a puppy. This is a grown man afraid of a puppy. Who is the paid professional in this encounter?
“Every child, every mailman, every runner, jogger, bicyclist has dealt with a dog running at them and no one ends up dead. Why do you go to deadly force immediately?”
Mr Singh resigned from the department shortly after the incident and has now been indicted by a grand jury and charged with criminally negligent homicide.
“Officers responding to welfare checks should not be so quick to use their deadly weapons in situations that do not call for use of force,” the Brooks family said in a statement.
“Our hope is not only that this officer is held responsible for Maggie’s death, but that the Arlington Police Department is also held accountable for its lack of training and procedures in responding to welfare checks.”
Mr Singh reportedly joined the department in 2012 as a detention officer.
He then graduated from the department’s police academy in February 2019 and completed his field training on 1 July 2019, a month before the shooting.
In addition to jail time Mr Singh, who surrendered himself to police and was booked in Tarrant County Jail, could face a fine of up to $10,000.
“When you deal with a dog that’s ready to attack then the person in any one of those careers would have to do what they have to do to protect themselves,’ said his lawyer, Kathy Lowthorp, after his arrest.
“The dog should’ve been on a leash.”
Under Texas law criminally negligent homicide is the least serious of the state’s four criminal homicide offences, below manslaughter, murder and capital murder.
Arlington Police Department made no comment after the arrest but at the time of the shooting former Police Chief Will Johnson said that Ms Brooks “was never the intended target’ of Mr Singh’s use of force.
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