Texas Police Officer Fired After Fatally Shooting Unarmed College Student

By Bill Chappell / NPR

Published August 12, 2015 at 1:46 AM PDT

This story was published more than 9 years ago.

Brad Miller was fired from the Arlington police force Tuesday, after the department's chief said he was troubled with how Miller acted in the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man Friday.

Days after a police officer in the Dallas suburb of Arlington fatally shot a young man at a car dealership, Arlington's police chief says Officer Brad Miller has been fired.

Protesters are also calling for criminal charges and police reforms, citing what they call a pattern of violence. Demonstrators held a rally and a march Monday at which people held placards bearing the names of people who have died at the hands of police. Miller is white; he shot Christian Taylor, 19, who was black.

The shooting occurred in the early hours of Friday, after police received a 911 call from someone who said that "a 'thin black man with a blond Mohawk' was seen jumping on the windshield of a gray Ford Mustang," according to member station KERA.

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That young man was Taylor, a football player at Angelo State University in West Texas. Police say security camera footage shows Taylor damaging vehicles on the lot and driving a car through the dealership's glass doors. Taylor was shot multiple times after the officer, who was in training, confronted him in the car dealer's showroom.

From Dallas, KERA's Lauren Silverman reports:

"Rookie Officer Brad Miller was responding to a reported burglary when he shot Taylor on Friday. At first he was placed on administrative leave, but after reviewing the facts, Arlington Police Chief Will Johnson said that wasn't enough. " 'Officer Miller exercised inappropriate judgment by entering the building alone,' Johnson said, adding that the decision 'created an environment of cascading consequences that produced an unrecoverable outcome.' "Johnson says he has serious concerns about why the officer used deadly force. A decision about whether Miller's actions were criminal though, he says, will be up to the district attorney."

The police chief also relayed more of what happened that morning. The Dallas Morning News reports, "Johnson said at one point, Taylor and one officer talked to each other on either side of locked glass doors at the showroom. The officer said he told Taylor to surrender. Instead, Taylor held up a set of keys and said he was going to steal a car, police said."