A white Pennsylvania police officer was charged with criminal homicide just eight days after fatally shooting an unarmed black teenager in the back in a case built quickly on the testimony of multiple witnesses, video and the officer’s own conflicting statements.
“You do not shoot someone in the back if they are not a threat to you,” Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen Zappala said.
East Pittsburgh officer Michael Rosfeld was charged Wednesday in the June 19 shooting death of 17-year-old Antwon Rose Jr. after the teen fled from a traffic stop. Rosfeld, 30, turned himself in and was later released on $250,000 bond.
Patrick Thomassey, a lawyer for Rosfeld didn’t say much about the charge as he left court Wednesday morning, but had earlier said that his client was depressed and had been in shock since the shooting because it was the first time he had fired his service weapon.
That speed with which prosecutors charged Rosfeld isn’t unusual for Pennsylvania, said criminologist Philip Stinson who works at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. He’s been tracking police shootings and officer prosecutions for more than a decade and said the process for filing charges in Pennsylvania makes it easier to move fast, but the specific details of the shooting also made it easier.
“Videos change things. They don’t necessarily change the outcome in terms of convictions, but they do change the ability to charge quickly,” Stinson said. “And in a case like this where you have four or five corroborating witnesses to bystander video that was released before investigators ever had it, it gave the district attorney the opportunity to make a quick decision.”
A bystander captured video from a nearby house that showed a portion of the traffic stop and the subsequent shooting of Rose and posted it on Facebook. There were numerous other people who also witnessed the shooting from their homes and spoke to police.
Rosfeld, who had been sworn in a few hours earlier after working at the department for a few weeks, pulled over the car Rose was riding in because it matched the description of a car witnesses reported seeing leave the area of a non-fatal drive-by shooting in a nearby town.
Rosfeld, who was alone in his patrol car, began taking the driver into custody and the two passengers, Rose and another teenager who police say was the shooter in the earlier drive-by, fled from the passenger side. Rosfeld fired three shots after they began running, striking Rose in the cheek, the right elbow and the fatal shot that entered his back and pierced his lung and heart.
The officer’s story was inconsistent when he was interviewed by investigators. Court documents say Rosfeld at first said Rose pointed his hands with a dark object he thought was a gun at him. In recapping his version of events to investigators he said he wasn’t sure there was a gun or that the teen had pointed his hands in his direction.
Witnesses told investigators and the video shows Rose briefly raising his empty hands before running from the car. He made it less than 50 feet (15 meters) before he was shot.
Fred Rabner, an attorney who represents Rose’s family, said they are prepared for the long road that they hope will lead to a conviction.
“And we’re not foolish enough to believe that this is going to be an easy mile to run either, we recognize that it’s going to be fraught with hurdles,” Rabner said. “But we recognize that things take their course and the investigators seem earnest in their efforts to put the case together.”
Stinson said he updated his database Wednesday to show Rosfeld was the 87th nonfederal sworn officer to be charged in an on-duty fatal shooting in the US since 2005. Of those charged, 32 have been convicted, 41 have been acquitted or had charges dropped and 14 cases are still pending.
“It’s not a given once an officer is charged that they will be convicted. I would bet the district attorney’s investigators are still gathering evidence and still putting the case together,” Stinson said.
White US police officer charged in fatal shooting of black teen
White US police officer charged in fatal shooting of black teen
Mystery of CIA’s lost nuclear device haunts Himalayan villagers 60 years on
- Plutonium-fueled spy system was meant to monitor China’s nuclear activity after 1964 atomic tests
- Porter who took part in Nanda Devi mission warned family of ‘danger buried in snow’
NEW DELHI: Porters who helped American intelligence officers carry a nuclear spy system up the precarious slopes of Nanda Devi, India’s second-highest peak, returned home with stories that sent shockwaves through nearby villages, leaving many in fear that still holds six decades later.
A CIA team, working with India’s Intelligence Bureau, planned to install the device in the remote part of the Himalayas to monitor China, but a blizzard forced them to abandon the system before reaching the summit.
When they returned, the device was gone.
The spy system contained a large quantity of highly radioactive plutonium-238 — roughly a third of the amount used in the atomic bomb dropped by the US on the Japanese city of Nagasaki in the closing stages of the Second World War.
“The workers and porters who went with the CIA team in 1965 would tell the story of the nuclear device, and the villagers have been living in fear ever since,” said Narendra Rana from the Lata village near Nanda Devi’s peak.
His father, Dhan Singh Rana, was one of the porters who carried the device during the CIA’s mission in 1965.
“He told me there was a danger buried in the snow,” Rana said. “The villagers fear that as long as the device is buried in the snow, they are safe, but if it bursts, it will contaminate the air and water, and no one will be safe after that.”
During the Sino-Indian tensions in the 1960s, India cooperated with the US in surveillance after China conducted its first nuclear tests in 1964. The Nanda Devi mission was part of this cooperation and was classified for years. It only came under public scrutiny in 1978, when the story was broken by Outsider magazine.
The article caused an uproar in India, with lawmakers demanding the location of the nuclear device be revealed and calling for political accountability. The same year, then Prime Minister Morarji Desai set up a committee to assess whether nuclear material in the area near Nanda Devi could pollute the Ganges River, which originates there.
The Ganges is one of the world’s most crucial freshwater sources, with about 655 million people in India, Nepal, and Bangladesh depending on it for their essential needs.
The committee, chaired by prominent scientists, submitted its report a few months later, dismissing any cause for concerns, and establishing that even in the worst-case scenario of the device’s rupture, the river’s water would not be contaminated.
But for the villagers, the fear that the shell containing radioactive plutonium could break apart never goes away, and peace may only come once it is found.
Many believe the device, trapped within the glacier’s shifting ice, may have moved downhill over time.
Rana’s father told him that the device felt hot when it was carried, and he believed it might have melted its way into the glacier, remaining buried deep inside.
An imposing mass of rock and ice, Nanda Devi at 7,816 m is the second-highest mountain in India after Kangchenjunga.
When a glacier near the mountain burst in 2021, claiming over 200 lives, scientists explained that the disaster was due to global warming, but in nearby villages the incident was initially blamed on a nuclear explosion.
“They feared the device had burst. Those rescuing people were afraid they might die from radiation,” Rana said. “If any noise is heard, if any smoke appears in the sky, we start fearing a leak from the nuclear device.”
The latent fear surfaces whenever natural disasters strike or media coverage puts the missing device back in the spotlight. Most recently, a New York Times article on the CIA mission’s 60th anniversary reignited the unease.
“The apprehensions are genuine. After 1965, Americans came twice to search for the device. The villagers accompanied them, but it could not be found, which remains a concern for the local community,” said Atul Soti, an environmentalist in Joshimath, Uttarakhand, about 50 km from Nanda Devi.
“People are worried. They have repeatedly sought answers from the government, but no clear response has been provided so far. Periodically, the villagers voice their concerns, and they need a definitive government statement on this issue.”
Despite repeated queries whenever media attention arises, Indian officials have not released detailed updates since the Desai-appointed committee submitted its findings.
“The government should issue a white paper to address people’s concerns. The white paper will make it clear about the status of the device, and whether leakage from the device could pollute the Ganges River,” Soti told Arab News.
“The government should be clear. If the government is not reacting, then it further reinforces the fear.”
