Officer found not guilty in shooting death of unarmed South Carolina man after high speed chase

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COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — A jury found a former small town South Carolina police officer not guilty of voluntary manslaughter Friday in the shooting death of an unarmed man after a five-minute high speed chase.

Cassandra Dollard faced two to 30 years in prison if she had been found guilty of killing Robert Junior Langley with a gunshot to the chest as Langley tried to get out of his car after wrecking it into a ditch in February 2022.

Dollard was an officer in Hemingway when she tried to pull over Langley early one morning for running a stop sign. Langley didn't stop and Dollard chased the vehicle for more than five minutes, much of it at speeds over 100 mph (160 kph), going 8 miles (13 kilometers) outside her small town and into the next county.

After Langley's car wrecked, the dashboard camera in Dollard's cruiser captured her demanding Langley show her his hands. She slipped in the mud as she approached his car and fired a shot as Langley's head and chest was coming out of the car.

Dollard told investigators she felt vulnerable after falling when she looked into Langley's eyes and felt she lost a tactical advantage to keep her safe.

“I don’t know what he had in his hands. I just know he had something in his hands,” she said.

Investigators say Langley was holding on to $100 in cash when he was killed.

Authorities charged Dollard saying she didn’t need to chase Langley for a low level traffic offense or approach the vehicle the way she did.

Langley's family received a $1 million wrongful death settlement from the insurer of the Hemingway Police Department, a town of 530 people in Williamsburg County.

Dollard worked for six police agencies over a nearly 30-year law enforcement career and had been fired twice, according to police academy records.

“These cases are never easy. We appreciate the service of the jury this week, and we respect the jury’s decision,” Solicitor Jimmy Richardson said in a statement Friday announcing the verdict.