A suburban St. Louis police officer was indicted on a second-degree assault charge Wednesday for shooting a suspected shoplifter outside a grocery store.
St. Louis County prosecutor Wesley Bell said Julia Crews, 37, is charged in the April 23 shooting on the parking lot of a Schnucks store in Ladue, one of Missouri’s wealthiest communities. The 33-year-old woman who was shot was hospitalized but authorities said she will survive. Crews is white; the woman who was shot is black.
Crews’ attorney, Travis Noble, has said Crews meant to use her stun gun but mistakenly grabbed her service revolver and shot the woman once. Noble told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the officer is “devastated.”
The shooting is among at least 13 since 2001 in which officers said they muddled their guns and stun guns, University of Missouri-St. Louis criminologist David Klinger said. He noted that police officers typically train by drawing their gun, not their stun gun, and that becomes habit… Fox News