Adam Toledo: They put on leave the prosecutor who assured that the Hispanic boy was armed when he was shot

A prosecutor who hinted in court that the Hispanic boy Adam Toledo, 13, was holding a pistol the moment he was shot to death by a police officer from Chicago was released a day after a video showing that the minor is not carrying anything in his hands was revealed to the public.

“Last week in court, a prosecutor from our office did not fully present the facts surrounding the death of a 13-year-old boy,” Sarah Sinovic, the spokeswoman for Cook County State Attorney Kim Foxx, said in a statement. “We have put that individual on leave and are conducting an internal investigation into the matter.”

During an April 10 bail hearing for Ruben Roman, a 21-year-old who was with Adam when he was shot on March 29, the assistant state attorney James Murphy seemed to imply that the boy was still holding the gun when the policeman Eric Stillman pulled the trigger.

“The agent told (Adam) to let her go when (Adam) turns to the agent. (Adam) he has a gun in his right hand”, said Murphy, according to the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper. “The agent shoots (Adam) once, hitting him in the chest. The gun that (Adam) was holding fell against the fence a few feet away.”

However, Murphy did not explain what the video and still images taken from it show: That Adam had nothing in his hands at the time of being shot and had dropped or thrown the weapon less than a second before the officer fired at him. Police found the gun next to a fence a short distance from the scene after the incident.

According to the Chicago Tribune newspaper, Foxx told staff in an email that the language in the statement that Murphy read in court “It does not fully reflect all the evidence that had been provided to our office.”

But on Friday, Sinovic hinted that Murphy perhaps did not have access to the full video that was released publicly Thursday at the time of his remarks, telling the Sun-Times: “What videos were made available to (Murphy) remains under investigation. We continue to try to find out what he had access to when he made those statements in court.”

On Saturday, Sinovic noted in an email that the state prosecutor’s office will not comment on who else in the prosecution saw the video before the April 10 hearing, nor will it answer any other questions.

The decision to press charges against Stillman will fall to the Cook County State Attorney’s Office, which will receive the report from the Civil Police Responsibility Office after that independent board completes its investigation.

Several jurists said Friday that they do not believe that Stillman can be charged under the criteria set out in a 1989 Supreme Court ruling on the use of police force, although one of them said prosecutors could see enough evidence to justify filing a manslaughter charge and allow a jury to decide guilt or innocence.

The death of the Hispanic minor at the hands of Stillman adds to the tensions derived from the police procedure in Chicago and other parts of the United States, particularly in the Black and Latino communities.

The videos and other investigative materials are set against the backdrop of the Minneapolis trial of former agent Derek Chauvin for the death of George Floyd and the recent death of another black man, Daunte Wright, at the hands of police in one of the suburbs. of that city.