ORANGEBURG, S.C. (AP) — A white police chief who fatally shot an unarmed black man in South Carolina in 2011 was charged with murder, and his lawyer accused prosecutors of taking advantage of national outrage toward police to get the indictment.
Richard Combs, the former police chief and sole officer in the small town of Eutawville (YOO’-tah-vihl), was indicted Wednesday, the same day a grand jury in New York decided against charging an officer in a chokehold death, and less than two weeks after there was no indictment in the fatal police shooting in Ferguson, Missouri. Those cases also involved white officers and unarmed black men and the decision not to charge the officers set off protests around the country.
The indictment in the South Carolina case was released Thursday.
