Georgia sheriff's deputy who fatally shot Black man will not be charged

27/2/2025 6:16

A white sheriff's deputy in Georgia

who fatally shot a Black man who previously was freed from

prison after exoneration will not face criminal charges

following a local prosecutor's conclusion that the officer's use

of force was reasonable.



The officer, Buck Aldridge, had pulled over Leonard Allan

Cure, 53, in October 2023 along Interstate 95 in Camden County

near the Florida border while Cure was driving to visit his

mother. The Camden County Sheriff's Office has said that Cure

was pulled over for driving more than 100 miles (161 km) per

hour in a 70 miles (113 km) per hour zone.



The Georgia Bureau of Investigation said the deputy told

Cure he was under arrest but Cure failed to comply with the

officer's requests and assaulted him. Before shooting, the

deputy used a Taser and a baton in an effort to subdue Cure, the

agency said.



The Camden County Sheriff's Office said on Wednesday that

Keith Higgins, the district attorney for the Brunswick Judicial

District, concluded that Aldridge's use of force was

"objectively reasonable."



"The pursuit of criminal charges, therefore, is not

warranted," Higgins said in a statement.



Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who represents Cure's

family, called the decision not to bring charges "a devastating

failure of justice." Cure was exonerated in 2020 after serving

16 years for an armed robbery conviction.



Several high-profile killings of Black people in recent

years led to anti-racism protests against police brutality in

the United States and elsewhere, particularly after the 2020

murder of George Floyd, a Black man who died after a white

police officer knelt on his neck for several minutes.