After a week of hiding, a 25-year-old white police officer from Kingsland, Ga., was arrested for the murder of an unarmed Black motorist, Anthony Marcell Green.
On Wednesday, Zechariah Presley, who has a questionable history of violence, finally
surrendered himself to the Camden County Sheriff’s office after he fatally shot a 33-year-old fleeing Green, on June 20th.
According to reports, Green was driving with an unidentified passenger around 10:42 p.m. when Presley began trailing their vehicle. After coming to a stop at an intersection, Green and the passenger proceeded to run on foot before Presley caught up, making physical contact with Green.
When an unarmed Green broke away and fled, Presley “fired multiple shots” that were “the result of a sudden, violent, and irresistible passion, resulting from serious provocation sufficient to excite such passion in a reasonable person,” the
arrest warrant said.
Presley has since been fired and charged with voluntary manslaughter. His career in the police force was short and violent. Over the span of his 13-month career, he racked up nine incidents of on-duty violence with an even sketchier history of domestic violence found in his application, according to
NewsJax4.
“When I initially heard about the shooting, my initial thought was that it Presley,” Naval veteran Jeffrey Travers told the local station.
Travers says he isn’t surprised by what happened after being tased for alleged “disorderly conduct” by Presley earlier this year, who he believes “escalated the situation too quickly.”
The incident between Presley and Green is one of many brutal incidents where a quickly escalated situation results in the death of an unarmed Black man by the hands of a man in uniform.
In 2017 alone,
27 percent of the 1,129 people killed by police were Black. And it seems as though the trend is likely to follow in 2018.
“I do believe that a strong majority of our officers are here to do the right thing,” Travers said. “Sometimes, they slip through the cracks. I think Officer Presley slipped through the cracks, and unfortunately, it ended this way.”
