LONDON — A police officer has been charged with the murder of a former Premier League soccer player who died in 2016 after being shot by a Taser gun during a confrontation outside his father’s home in western England, prosecutors said on Thursday.

Officers from the West Mercia Police, the regional force, had tried to subdue the former player, Dalian Atkinson, 48, with the Taser, which delivers an electrical charge and is intended to be less harmful than ordinary firearms. Mr. Atkinson was pronounced dead after being taken to a hospital.

A spokesman for the Crown Prosecution Service said it was unusual for an officer to be charged with murder for an action taken while carrying out duties on the job. The case is even more unusual because of the involvement of the Taser, which is used precisely because it is less likely to cause loss of life.

Tasers are not listed by the British government as lethal weapons, and they are excluded from the annual figures documenting the use of firearms by the police.