Two officers with the Ann Arbor Police Department are on administrative leave after they shot Aura Rosser to death while responding to a domestic violence incident on Sunday.
The Michigan State Police are still investigating what happened on the 2000 block of Winewood in Ann Arbor when the two police officers arrived around 11:45 p.m. on Sunday, responding to a domestic disturbance.
The officers involved justify the shooting saying that 40-year-old Rosser was coming at them with a knife, so they had no choice but to use deadly force. The family of the victim is having a hard time believing that story.
“She would have fainted at the sight of the gun being drawn on her,” said Rosser’s sister Shae Ward told MlLive.com. “She would have been extremely docile, no aggression whatsoever towards police.”
Ward went into further detail to prove just how strange the police’s claims are.
“She was very artistic,” she said. “She was deeply into painting with oils and acrylics. She’s a culture-type of gal. She was a really sweet girl. Wild. Outgoing. Articulate.”
As of Wednesday, there was still no new information to release, according to First Lt. Sean Furlong who is in charge of the investigation.
“We’re still waiting on the reports from the medical examiner,” he said.
According to her sister, Rosser had moved to Ann Arbor to be closer to drug rehab facilities and get her life back on track. She was living with boyfriend Victor Stephens.
Stephens admitted that they were fighting so he called police to remove her from the home, but he does not think that legal force was necessary, reported the Detroit Free Press.
“Why would you kill her?” Stephens said on Monday. “It was a woman with a knife. It doesn’t make any sense…Me and her, we had an argument. Glass was being broke, so I called the police to escort her out,” Stephens said.
“The police said ‘police,’ so I stopped. She walked towards them,” Stephens said. “They said ‘freeze’ and the next thing I know I heard [gunshots].”
This is the first case of police officers using lethal force in Ann Arbor since 1976.
