Attorney General Letitia James will not seek charges against two officers who shot a fleeing armed man in Brooklyn last May, after her office issued a report saying a prosecutor wouldn’t be able to disprove a justification defense beyond a reasonable doubt.
James’s investigators sat down with the family of Christian Emile on Wednesday, telling the 33-year-old man’s mother, fiance, close cousin and two other relatives about their decision not to charge the officers who shot and killed Emile in East Flatbush on May 12, 2025.
“I was very disappointed with what I heard today,” Emile’s mother, Tarnisha Woolard, told the Daily News. “I just feel like my son was executed on the street.”
“Nobody wants to go up against the big, almighty, powerful NYPD,” she added. “Nobody wants to ever say that they’re wrong. It’s always a way to find that the NYPD was never wrong, and until they start holding the NYPD accountable, they’re always going to keep getting away with whatever they do. Because nobody holds them accountable.”
Theodore Parisienne for New York Daily News
Police investigate the scene where Christian Emile was shot in East Flatbush on May 12, 2024. (Theodore Parisienne for New York Daily News)
Body-cam footage from Officer Alexander Campos — one of the two officers who fired at Emile — shows the cop arriving at the intersection of E. 52nd St. and Church Ave. around 1 a.m. and getting out of a marked police car. Campos’ fellow officers, Sgt. Kyle Sforza and Officer Brian Mejia-Morel, who were already on the scene, confronted Emile and chased him. Campos was holding a gun as Emile fled.
The video shows Campos deploy his Taser as three shots ring out in the background. The stun gun hit Emile, and he stumbled but got back up and keeps running, as both Campos and Mejia-Morel opened fire, bringing Emile to the ground, the video shows.
Just before the confrontation, Emile was seen pacing between cars and arguing with at least one other person, a gun in his hand.
“Under New York’s justification law, a police officer may use deadly physical force when the officer reasonably believes it to be necessary to defend against the use of deadly physical force by another,” the AG’s office said in a statement Wednesday. “In this case, when officers arrived to investigate a dispute on the street, they encountered Mr. Emile, who had a gun in his hand, ran from officers, and ignored repeated commands to drop his weapon.”
The statement continued, “Under these circumstances, given the law and the evidence, a prosecutor would not be able to disprove beyond a reasonable doubt at trial that the officers’ use of deadly physical force against Mr. Emile was justified, and therefore OSI (Office of Special Investigation) determined that criminal charges would not be pursued in this matter.”
The two officers shot Emile six times, and one of their bullets grazed a bystander’s back.
Neither the NYPD nor the Police Benevolent Association returned a request for comment on the AG’s decision.
Woolard said she hoped James would make a different choice, adding her absence at the meeting with investigators made it clear the officers wouldn’t be facing charges.
Her absence is like her saying “‘OK, you go and tell them, you deal with it.’ So it’s basically like she doesn’t have time for this,” Woolard said.
MK Kaishian, the lawyer for Emile’s family, pointed out both the video and report show Mejia-Morel started firing bullets at the same time Campos deployed his Taser. Also, Kaishian said, the video and report don’t back up earlier assertions by police that Emile pointed the gun at a rival, or at the cops.
The family in August filed a lawsuit against the city and the responding officers in Brooklyn Supreme Court.
