Virginia state prosecutor will seek indictment from grand jury over death of unarmed black 18-year-old, who was shot dead by a white police officer in April

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

A state prosecutor in Virginia will pursue criminal charges against a police officer who shot dead an unarmed black 18-year-old outside a supermarket in the city of Portsmouth earlier this year, it was announced on Thursday.

Stephen Rankin: the military-trained officer who killed two unarmed men Read more

Stephanie Morales, the commonwealth’s attorney for Portsmouth, will request an indictment against the officer who fatally shot William Chapman, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor said in a statement. The officer has been identified by the Guardian as Stephen Rankin.

“The Commonwealth’s attorney’s office has reviewed all evidence and will seek an indictment before the next grand jury,” the spokeswoman, Tamara Shewmake, said, adding Morales “will provide an update following grand jury presentment”.

Chapman was shot in the head and chest by Rankin outside a Walmart superstore on the morning of 22 April. The pair engaged in a physical struggle after Rankin tried to arrest the 18-year-old on suspicion of shoplifting, according to police. Witnesses said Chapman broke free and then stepped back towards the officer aggressively before being shot twice. The 18-year-old was the second unarmed man shot dead by Rankin.

Authorities have declined to say whether Chapman was found to have stolen anything. An autopsy report obtained by the Guardian said Chapman’s body showed no signs of a close-range shot, indicating that he was shot from several feet away.

Timesha Slaughter, Chapman’s sister, said on Thursday: “We are very happy. We started thinking that it wasn’t going to happen and that they would drop the case. I hope that we and the family of the other man he shot can get justice.”

Earl Lewis, a cousin of Chapman, said Morales told the family in a telephone call that the grand jury was due to consider the case on Thursday 3 September, according to Lewis. Morales’s spokeswoman did not respond to requests for comment.

“It’s up to the grand jury, but we hope that justice will prevail,” said Lewis, who is a former police officer. “We always wanted this to be professional and to have this done in a righteous way. We are glad we stayed the course.”

William Chapman: unarmed 18-year-old shot dead by officer who killed before Read more

The shooting was overshadowed nationally by protests and riots in Baltimore, Maryland, over the death three days earlier of Freddie Gray in police custody. Gray, 25, suffered a broken neck after not being seatbelted into the back of a police van. Six Baltimore officers have been indicted with charges as severe as murder.

Chapman’s death was investigated by the Virginia state police, which passed its findings to Morales earlier this month. The prosecutor also commissioned her own investigative work and tests by the state department of forensic science, according to her spokeswoman.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Officer Stephen D Rankin leaves court in Norfolk, Virginia with his attorneys 28 February 2012. Photograph: Brian J Clark/The Virginian-Pilot

Rankin, 36, is a veteran of the US navy who earned a grey belt in the the marine corps martial arts programme, which requires the ability to “stop an aggressor’s attack” with hand-to-hand combat.

The officer had previously been barred from street patrols for almost three years after killing another unarmed man.

In April 2011, he fatally shot Kirill Denyakin, a Kazakh cook, less than three miles from the site of Chapman’s death. Rankin shot Denyakin 11 times after responding to a 911 call about the 26-year-old aggressively banging at the door of a building where he was staying.

Rankin said he shot Denyakin because the cook, who was drunk, charged at him while reaching into the waistband of his jeans. The officer said he feared Denyakin would pull out a weapon. No weapon was found. A grand jury declined to indict Rankin with voluntary manslaughter and Denyakin’s family eventually lost a $22m civil lawsuit against the officer.

Rankin was also chided by police chiefs for posting more than 240 comments about the case and related issues online under a pseudonym. Most of the comments either offered himself support or criticised Denyakin.

“22 mil wont buy your boy back,” he wrote in one. Elsewhere he noted most Americans couldn’t hope to earn such sums in an entire career, “let alone a habitual drunk working as a hotel cook”.

The autopsy on Chapman’s body was carried out by Wendy Gunther, an assistant chief medical examiner for Virginia, who wrote that she found “no evidence of close-range fire”.

Her report said “no fouling or stippling” – the sooty residue and speckled gunpowder burns typically left by a close- or intermediate-range gunshot – were found on the skin around either of Chapman’s wounds, nor on the clothing where the shot to his chest entered.