A jury has found a former Milwaukee police officer not guilty of reckless homicide in the shooting death of Sylville Smith, a 23-year-old black man, last August.

Dominique Heaggan-Brown, who is also black, was one of two uniformed police officers on patrol who stopped two men in a car. The two men ran, the officers gave chase, and Heaggan-Brown shot and killed Smith.

The death sparked riots on Milwaukee’s north side, The Two-Way had reported.

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In charging Heaggan-Brown with reckless homicide, member station WUWM reported, the local district attorney said that “the first shot he fired, hitting Smith in the arm was justified because [Smith] was armed, but not the second shot” that hit him in the torso and killed him.

“According to the complaint, Smith had tossed his gun over a fence and was lying on the ground unarmed when the second bullet killed him,” the member station added.

During the trial, Heaggan-Brown’s lawyer told the jury that the “first shot was a justifiable shot and that justification did not change in 1.69 seconds,” The Associated Press reported.

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