A Maryland grand jury declined to charge four police officers in the fatal shooting of a 24-year-old man they said fired first during a late-night foot chase earlier this year in Gaithersburg.
Three of the officers, members of a plainclothes street crimes unit for the Gaithersburg Police Department, told investigators they saw a “muzzle flash” from a gun aimed at them by Kwamena Ocran, according to the officers’ recorded statements released by Montgomery County prosecutors announcing the grand jury’s decision Thursday. The fourth officer said a round whizzed by his head.
“I could hear it ... to my left side, approximately several feet,” said Officer James Doyle
Three officers also said they had yelled at Ocran to stop running and put his hands up, but instead he kept going, turned his body and lifted the gun from his waistband, according to the report. “Police! Police!” Cpl. Larbi Dakkouni said he had shouted, “Don’t do it!”
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All four officers fired. Ocran was hit eight times, including two wounds to his “left lateral back,” according to a 12-page report of the case that prosecutors also released Thursday.
The other officers involved were Sgt. Willie Delgado and Officer Kyle Khuen. Their interaction with Ocran — on Jan. 8 outside the Chelsea Park apartments in central Gaithersburg — began after they say they received a tip that Ocran was carrying a gun that he intended to sell, according to the prosecutors’ report.
The four remain on administrative leave while Gaithersburg police conduct their own probe to see if proper department procedures were followed.
The incident had been a challenge for criminal authorities to investigate.
It was not video-recorded because, at the time, Gaithersburg’s plainclothes officers were not required to wear body cameras. And while an officer who arrived at the scene moments after the shooting was wearing a camera — and recorded footage of a gun next to Ocran’s body — crime scene technicians could never find shell casings from Ocran’s gun, the report said. In three metal detector sweeps of the scene, technicians picked up 23 other ammunition casings that were linked to the officers’ guns, according to prosecutors.
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Brian McDaniel, an attorney for Ocran’s mother, said the family maintains the officers’ actions were illegal and that Ocran never shot at them.
“There is no independent or objective evidence corroborating the assertion that he fired a weapon,” McDaniel said.
He now expects to receive the full investigative files from prosecutors, which he said will help in his independent probe.
Ocran’s mother, Melody Cooper, said she has been traumatized twice — first by her son’s death and now by the decision not to charge the officers.
“He was my youngest child. They took him away from me,” Cooper said. “He was a great brother, a great son, a great uncle. He had his whole life in front of him.”
The investigation was first handled by Montgomery County police detectives. Their work was then coordinated and reviewed by prosecutors at the Howard County State’s Attorney’s Office. Prosecutors in both counties have an agreement to review each other’s fatal police-involved shootings.
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In an interview Friday, Howard State’s Attorney Rich Gibson and Howard Deputy State’s Attorney Christopher Sandmann said that through DNA testing, witness statements and video evidence, they established that Ocran had a gun when he was running from the officers, but they couldn’t find physical evidence to confirm that Ocran fired the gun.
“That doesn’t mean the officers are incorrect. That doesn’t mean the officers are lying. It just means that we could not find physical evidence to corroborate their statements,” Gibson said.
Prosecutors decided to present their findings to a 23-member grand jury, which, unlike trial juries, are empaneled to review evidence to determine if charges should be filed. The grand jury started listening to and reviewing the findings on Sept. 9, including video that showed the gun next to Ocran and testimony from the lead detective.
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Five days after the grand jury session, the officers came in to speak with prosecutors for the first time.
By then, Sandmann said, he and Gibson had learned that while investigators had put bags around Ocran’s hands to conduct gunshot residue analysis, there had been a “mistake or miscommunication” and Ocran’s hands were never swabbed for the test.
Investigators did find gunshot residue on the right sleeve of a jacket Ocran was wearing, but as grand jurors were told by an expert witness, it could have been transferred by the officers gunshots, according to Gibson and Sandmann.
Prosecutors again presented evidence to the grand jury on Sept. 16, Sept. 30 and this week on Thursday. A majority of the grand jurors concluded “there was not enough evidence to charge the officers,” according to the prosecutors’ report.
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The report addressed how no casings from Ocran’s gun were found at the scene, indicating that such evidence could have been submerged or lost in mud.
“Detectives described the grounds as being extremely wet and that some areas had standing water that evening,” the report stated.
Still, technicians used metal detectors on their searches, according to prosecutors.
Events leading to the shooting started in at least December 2020, according to the report, when an officer in Gaithersburg’s street crimes unit received a tip that Ocran, a convicted robber who had been recently incarcerated, now carried a gun everywhere — something his criminal record prohibited him from doing. The tipster also relayed that Ocran had said he was “not going back to jail” and would “shoot it out,” the report said.
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Around noon on Jan. 8, the unit got another tip that Ocran was trying to sell a gun, according to prosecutors. They decided to apprehend him to see if he had a gun. The four officers did so in covert fashion, setting up surveillance outside Ocran’s girlfriend’s residence at the Chelsea Park Apartments. About 5 p.m., they saw him leave, followed him walking to a shopping area a mile away, then followed him back.
Khuen positioned himself in the apartment parking lot such that Ocran approached him.
“He walked past me and kind of looked at me,” Khuen told prosecutors. “I had my hood up, had my phone up to my ear, pretending like I was talking to somebody. I just gave him a head nod because he was staring at me weird. And then when he walked past me, I put my phone in my pocket, pulled my badge out and my flashlight. I said something to the effect of, ‘Hey bro, police, can I talk to you for a second?’”
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Ocran cursed, according to Khuen, and took off.
Khuen chased him, as did the other three officers, across the parking lot and around the corner of the a building, such that the five were heading down a narrow, grassy area next to a retaining wall along Route 355.
Khuen said he was about five yards from Ocran when Ocran turned, raised his arm and fired.
“That’s when I saw the muzzle flash,” Khuen said.
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