A former San Diego sheriff’s deputy who was only sentenced to a year in prison and three years of probation for shooting and killing an unarmed man now faces up to life in prison after receiving federal charges behind the same shooting.
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The Justice Department announced last week that a federal grand jury returned a two-count indictment against 23-year-old Aaron Russell, who has been charged with depriving 36-year-old Nicholas Bils of “his right to be free from officers using excessive force and with discharging a firearm in a violent crime.”
Russell was initially charged with murder, but he pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter, which resulted in a sentence that was far too light for someone who needlessly took a life without any warning whatsoever.
According to The East Bay Times, Russell shot Bils, a man with mental health issues who was reportedly “afraid of the police”, four times after he escaped from handcuffs and ran away.
The May 1, 2020, confrontation with Bils, 36, began when he was playing with his dog at San Diego’s Old Town State Park. Rangers told him the park was closed because of COVID restrictions. Bils allegedly brandished a golf club at a ranger before running away and was arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon and resisting arrest.
Bils was taken in a State Parks patrol car to the downtown jail. As the car pulled into the jail’s sally port, he slipped out of his handcuffs, opened the car door and began to run.
Russell, a 23-year-old jail deputy with 18 months on the force, witnessed the escape attempt.
The U.S. Justice Department’s announcement Friday said: “Without warning Bils or his fellow officers, Russell fired five shots at Bils, who was unarmed, as he ran away. … None of the other officers on scene fired a shot or drew a weapon.”
Bils was struck four times and was pronounced dead at a hospital.
Regardless of Russell’s lack of experience, he fired five shots at a man who he had to know was unarmed and was running away. How much training does it take to know it’s unnecessary, inhumane, and certainly illegal to use deadly force against someone who poses no immediate threat to anyone and to do so without giving it a second thought? Any cop who is that trigger-happy and casual about shooting a citizen is a fatal police brutality incident waiting to happen.
In 2022, San Diego County settled a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Bils’ family, whom the county agreed to pay $8.1 million. The family said Bils suffered from mental illness and was “terrified” of police.
The DOJ noted that, if convicted, ” Russell faces a maximum penalty of life in prison,” and that a “federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.”
