Agents members of a US Marshals Service task force who killed 32-year-old African American Winston Smith Jr. in Minneapolis on June 3 will not be tried. Crow Wing County Attorney Don Ryan said they will not be charged with shooting him down because they were justified in using force when they tried to arrest him while he was in an SUV in a parking lot. According to the US Marshals Service Smith had a gun, and the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension said evidence indicates that Smith fired his gun – a gun and a cartridge were found inside the car.
A woman who was in the SUV with Smith instead said through her lawyers that the agents weren’t in uniform and didn’t identify when they surrounded the car with guns drawn. Norhan Askar also said he never saw Smith with a gun or in his vehicle, and that he was shot after he picked up his cell phone to start recording. Authorities said there was no video of the shooting. When Smith was killed, Minneapolis was already in tensions over the deaths of George Floyd more than a year earlier and of Daunte Wright in April. Smith’s death led to protests in Minneapolis’s Uptown neighborhood.