A veteran Raleigh police officer said a 30-year-old man with mental problems threatened him with a knife last year before he fatally shot him.
But attorneys on behalf of the slain man’s family said SBI Crime Lab analysts did not find any evidence that the knife belonged to the shooting victim.
Raleigh attorneys Catherine Edwards and Winston Kirby filed a lawsuit Tuesday on behalf of the family of a Soheil Mojarrad, who was shot to death by Officer William Brett Edwards last year.
Edwards said Mojarrad brandished a knife—but 20 feet away—on the night of April 20 when he shot him 11 times.
However, the complaint says that the fingers of Mojarrad’s right hand were “placed” around the handle and bottom of the blade of a small knife. Analysts at an SBI Crime Lab did not find his fingerprints or “identifiable DNA” on the knife when they tested it.
The crime lab analysts found no evidence “the knife belonged to or had even been handled by Mr. Mojarrad,” Edwards and Kirby reported.
“Even if Mr. Mojarrad had had a knife in his hand, he was not at a distance that he could have used it to exert serious bodily injury or deadly force” toward the officer,” the attorneys said in the complaint.
The family’s attorneys say the police department has a history of excessive force against Black and Brown people dating back to 1991, when an officer shot and killed Ivan Ingram, an innocent bystander during a drug raid. At least three police shooting victims since 2004 struggled with mental illness.
They also pointed to instances of police excessive force after Mojarrad’s death. On January 17, an officer forcibly removed Braily Andres-Batista Concepcion,—an unarmed, 22-year-old Brown man—from his car before he was “repeatedly hit and kneed him during an arrest.” On January 30, Officer W.B. Tapscott shot dead Keith Dutree Collins, a 52-year-old Black man who had a BB gun.
The shooting death of Mojarrad was problematic even before SBI testing of the knife. In a five-day report, police said the department had found no video footage to corroborate Edward’s version of what happened because his body camera was turned off. Moreover, the dash camera inside of Edwards’s patrol car faced away from the shooting scene, the INDY previously reported.
The attorneys say Edwards, a 10-year veteran, had taken a 20mg dose of Adderall, a stimulant used to treat attention deficit disorders or narcolepsy.
“A primary warning for Adderall users is that the medication may cause new or worse aggressive behavior or hostility,” according to the complaint.
In a press release, Edwards and Kirby said that Mojarrad’s death was the result of “both misconduct by an individual police officer, and serious policy and training failures on the Raleigh Police Department.”
Mojarrad’s death, according to the release, was due to the “foreseeable, and tragically preventable” consequences of “inappropriate policy and inadequate training that encouraged officers to unnecessarily use deadly force.”
The lawyers also blamed an inadequate body-camera policy and the department’s failure to discipline its officers, “both of which permitted rampant unaccountability for officers in the use of force scenarios.”
The lawsuit filing comes a little over two weeks after the death of George Floyd, the Minneapolis man who was killed by former officer Derek Chauvin. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison filed second-degree murder charges against Chauvin and accused him of taking Floyd’s life by kneeling on his neck for more than eight minutes. After memorial services in Minneapolis and Raeford, Floyd was buried Tuesday in Houston, where he grew up.
Floyd’s death on May 25 sparked outrage and protests—nationally and internationally—over systemic racism and police brutality. Protests in Raleigh that led to law enforcement teargassing protesters have prompted calls for Police Chief Cassandra Deck-Brown and Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin to resign.
The four defendants named in the complaint are Officer Edwards, Deck-Brown, city manager Ruffin Hall, and the city of Raleigh.
After Mojarrad died, police made public a police five-day report outlining a basic description of what transpired. Police reported that at about 8:30 p.m. on April 20, they were dispatched to a Sheetz gas station at 5200 New Bern Avenue. Store employees had complained that an individual refused to leave the business.
After having dinner with his family, Officer Edwards arrived at the station to gas up his patrol car. The store workers approached him and said the individual in question first refused to leave but then stole a customer’s cell phone and left the area.
The Mojarrad family attorneys say he took a cell phone plugged into the wall that did not belong to him before leaving the gas station. The attorneys say Mojarrad later threw the cell phone in a public trash can in front of an internet center at a nearby shopping center.
Mojarrad continued walking before he stopped to sit at a bench near the Overtime Sports Pub to have a cigarette.
In the five-day report, police said that Edwards returned to his patrol car and cruised through the shopping center parking lot searching for the person. He found Mojarrad—who matched the employee’s description of the man—sitting on the bench.
When Edwards started to approach Mojarrad in his car, Mojarrad began walking away, police reported.
Police say Edwards then got out of his patrol car and attempted to stop Mojarrad, who continued to walk away. When the officer told Mojarrad to stop, Mojarrad began yelling “obscenities” at Edwards and “waving his hands around.”
Attorneys representing Mojarrad’s family offer a different version of what happened when the officer confronted Mojarrad, whom they described as “a person of color,” in the 36-page complaint filed in Wake County Superior Court.
The attorneys say that in addition to not being suspected of any serious or violent crime, Mojarrad did not confront or threaten Edwards. He instead attempted to flee—while unarmed— to avoid a confrontation with the officer.
The complaint states that Edwards pursued the fleeing Mojarrad, “and with no reasonable justification,” he “fired eleven shots at Mr. Mojarrad, in four separate volleys.”
Mojarrad was struck eight times. At least two of the gunshots would have killed him independently, according to the complaint.
Mojarrad was found face-up, on his back, in a grassy area with his fingers around the knife.
Edwards, according to the complaint, was equipped with a body camera that he failed to activate before confronting Mojarrad. The attorneys say that’s because Deck-Brown, Hall, and the city have created policies that left Edwards’s improperly trained about the inappropriate use of force that deprived Mojarrad of his constitutional rights.
Mojarrad was a first-generation American of Mexican and Persian descent. He grew up in Raleigh, attended area public schools, did design work for real estate companies, and was employed by local restaurants.
The family attorneys say Mojarrad was known for his generosity and advocacy “for those belittled, troubled, or marginalized.” He loved music, science, and enjoyed nature walks.
His struggles with mental illness began in 2012 when he was struck by a vehicle in Asheville and suffered a traumatic brain injury.
“As a result, he suffered from pronounced mental illness, which caused heightened anxiety, fearfulness, and memory loss. He also began to have seizures,” according to the complaint.
He was pronounced dead at the shooting scene, less than a mile from his home.
Contact staff writer Thomasi McDonald at [email protected].
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