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McShann was later shot after police said officers approached the vehicle and observed an unresponsive male inside it with a pistol with an extended magazine in his lap. Police said McShann didn’t respond to commands to put his hands up. He died of multiple gunshot wounds, according to the county coroner.
A Montgomery County Prosecutor’s Office press release Tuesday said a special grand jury heard testimony from 15 witnesses, including officers, citizens and others over two days.
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“Ironically this discussion comes on the same day officials in Baton Rogue (La.) made the same decision in the police murder of Alton Sterling,” said a press release from the National Congress on Faith & Social Justice.
The release quotes McShann’s mother, Sabrina Jordan, as saying: “We in Dayton know that prosecutor Mat Heck is never going to present a case before any jury that results in an indictment against police.
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“The fact that police-involved murders and subsequent failure of prosecutors across the state and the Ohio Attorney General to bring any semblance of justice in these matters has prompted a number of lawsuits in Ohio against police.”
Heck this afternoon issued a statement in response to the statement from the National Congress On Faith & Social Justice.
In it, he extended “my deepest sympathies to the family of the deceased” and said the grand jury heard all the testimony, then determined that the officers did not act unlawfully.
“The grand jury is a cross-section of our community and is made up of Caucasian and African-American citizens, both male and female, of various ages,” Heck said. “The suggestion that this office would never present a case that would result in an indictment against a police officer is patently wrong. There have been police officers indicted and prosecuted in Montgomery County for criminal activity in which the facts and circumstances met the required elements of the law.”
Heck called it unproductive for organizations such National Congress on Faith & Social Justice to make “baseless and outlandish statements and accusations when they know none of the facts of the case and have not interviewed any witnesses.”
The grand jury’s decision came less than a week after Jordan filed a wrongful death civil rights lawsuit in Dayton’s U.S. District Court.
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The civil rights group release also said Jordan has reached out to family members of other people shot and killed by police to form the Dayton-based Ohio Families Against Police Brutality.
“The organization will focus on justice in cases like Jamarco and others,” the release said. “So, whereas a failure has taken place as usual with the grand jury process, the battle for justice will continue.”
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