JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri’s governor has commuted the sentence of a white Kansas City police officer who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the fatal shooting of a Black man whose death fueled racial justice protests.
The decision Friday to free Eric DeValkenaere was made as Gov. Mike Parson prepares to leave office.
DeValkenaere was serving a six-year prison sentence. He was convicted in 2021 of killing 26-year-old Cameron Lamb as he backed into his garage. Lamb’s name was invoked frequently during racial injustice protests in Kansas City in 2020 following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Lamb’s family even met with then-President Donald Trump that year.
At trial, DeValkenaere testified that he fired his weapon on Dec. 3, 2019, after Lamb pointed a gun at another detective, Troy Schwalm, and that he believed his actions saved his partner’s life.
Prosecutors, however, argued that police shouldn’t have been on the property and staged the shooting scene to support their claims that Lamb was armed.
The Associated Press