CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Two Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officers won't be charged for their actions during a deadly shooting outside the Walmart on Albemarle Road last November, District Attorney Spencer Merriweather announced.
On Nov. 5, 2021, CMPD officers responded to a Food Lion on Albemarle Road for a disturbance around 4:30 p.m. While at the Food Lion, a Walmart employee approached the officers and said someone in the store's parking lot pointed a gun at a store security guard.
A few minutes before 6 p.m., the security guard pointed the CMPD officers, identified as Micah Edmunds and James Longworth, toward the armed man. The armed man, 33-year-old Derrell Lamar Raney, was sitting on the grass with a backpack covering his right hand.
CMPD officers commanded Raney to show his hands. CMPD said Raney did not comply before partially pulling the gun from the backpack. Officers then told Raney to drop the weapon. Raney then made a move to raise the firearm up toward officers, at which point both officers fired their weapons and secured Raney's gun.
An autopsy found that Raney was shot six times, with gunshot wounds to the head, chest and left hand. It was determined that Edmunds fired six shots, while Longworth fired two shots.
"The evidence in this case would be insufficient to prove to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt that Officers Edmunds and Longworth did not act in a defense of themselves or another," Merriweather wrote. "The corroborated evidence tends to show that Officers Edmunds and Longworth were indeed reasonable in their belief that the decedent posed an imminent threat of great bodily harm or death to themselves and the public."