DA Nathan Hochman seeks to drop charges against Torrance police officers in deadly shooting
Nearly seven years after two Torrance police officers shot and killed a man, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office has moved to have their charges dropped.
District Attorney Nathan Hochman on Friday announced the decision to drop the case after his office determined the evidence was not strong enough to prove that the officers, Matthew Concannon and Anthony Chavez, committed voluntary manslaughter.
"We have filed a motion with the court to dismiss this case against these two officers," Hochman said in a news conference. "The people cannot prove its case of voluntary manslaughter against these two police officers for this shooting beyond a reasonable doubt."
In December 2018, the officers found 23-year-old Christopher Mitchell sitting in a stolen car. When they told him to get out of the car, they say he reached between his legs where they saw what looked like the butt of a sawed-off shotgun. They opened fire and killed him.
What the officers thought was a shotgun was actually an airgun.
The shooting was captured on Concannon's body worn camera and Hochman used still frames to show the butt of the gun between Mitchell's legs.
Hochman says the investigation under the District Attorney at the time of the shooting, Jackie Lacey, determined the officers saw the weapon and believed they were in imminent peril, and therefore should not be prosecuted.
But Hochman says George Gascon used the shooting as a political tool during his campaign in 2020, and when he took office, charged the officers with voluntary manslaughter in 2023.
"The problem is, the law changed, post George Floyd," Hochman explained. He applied the 2020 law to a 2018 incident."
The DA's office presented their request for dismissal to the court on Friday. The judge in the case is expected to make a decision on the dismissal by Tuesday.
