By Jeff Karoub
Associated Press
DETROIT (AP) — A U.S. customs agent will not be charged in the fatal shooting of a 20-year-old Detroit man, according to the Wayne County prosecutor.
Evidence and witness statements showed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Mitchell Quinn was “justified by the laws of self-defense” in the April 27 shooting death of Terrance Kellom, Prosecutor Kym Worthy said at a Wednesday news conference.
Kellom’s death came amid a national debate over police conduct — particularly toward black men. Kellom was black, as is the agent who shot him.
“Yes, black lives matter,” Worthy said. “Of course they matter. But you know what else matters? Credible facts matter. ... Doing justice matters and the truth matters.”
Police had said Quinn shot Kellom after he lunged at the ICE agent with a hammer in his father’s west side home. His father, Kevin Kellom, had disputed that account. Terrance Kellom was wanted on armed robbery and weapons charges.
An autopsy determined Kellom was shot multiple times, but Worthy ordered the report not be made public. She said Wednesday that Kellom was shot four times.
Speaking Wednesday ahead of Worthy’s announcement, Quinn’s lawyer David Griem said he had reviewed the reports submitted by the other five officers, and that all accounts were consistent.
“I’ve been doing this for more than 35 years — first 10 as a state, then a federal prosecutor,” Griem said. “I have prosecuted police officers, defended police officers. If there was ever a case in which the shooting was justified, this was it.”
Some protests in Detroit followed Kellom’s shooting, but they were small and peaceful compared to demonstrations that have taken place elsewhere.
Last year, an unarmed black man in New York and an unarmed 18-year-old black male in Ferguson, Missouri, died in separate violent encounters with police — cases that shined a national spotlight on police treatment of minorities and sparked calls for reforms. Protests and rioting followed Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson and a grand jury’s refusal to indict the officer.
The unrest resumed this month as protesters marked the one-year anniversary of Brown’s death.
Protests also followed the deaths of two unarmed black men after encounters with police earlier this year in Baltimore and South Carolina.
Officers have been charged in both of those cases.
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