Officer Who Shot Charleena Lyles Suspended For 2 Days

A Seattle police officer who did not have his taser during the fatal shooting of Charleena Lyles last June was suspended for two days without pay for violating Seattle Police department policy.

Officer Jason Anderson was involved in the killing of Lyles, a 30-year-old pregnant mother of four, who was shot when she called the police to report a burglary. 

According to the Seattle Times, the police officers found Lyles holding a knife when they showed up at her place. They shot her twice and she died on the scene with three of her children in her vicinity.

Lyles’ family argued that she suffered from mental illness and that the killing was unnecessary.

“Why couldn’t they have Tased her? They could have taken her down,” Lyles’ sister, Monika Williams, said at the time. “I could have taken her down. There’s no reason for her to be shot in front of her babies. The Seattle police shot the wrong one today.”

Interim Police Chief Carmen Best called Anderson’s lack of a taser in the incident “unacceptable,” according to the Seattle Times.

“Your complacency in this regard is unacceptable and added an otherwise unnecessary element to an incident already of significant public concern,” Best said.