The legal team for the family of a man shot to death by a Cobb County police officer during a traffic stop in 2021 is going after the county’s district attorney for failing to prosecute the cop behind the shooting.
Attorneys for Devontae Brown’s family issued a statement accusing Cobb County District Attorney Flynn D. Broady Jr. of not presenting all the evidence the Georgia Bureau of Investigation gathered about Brown’s shooting death to a grand jury.
They released body camera footage last November showing Officer Ian McDonnell shoot 28-year-old Brown after cops conducted a traffic stop on Brown for reckless driving.
The footage begins with a view of police cars surrounding Brown’s car near South Loop and Powder Springs Road in Marietta on Aug. 18, 2021. In the video, Brown’s car looks significantly damaged and its airbags were deployed.
McConnell is standing near Brown’s car with his gun pointed at the driver’s side window, repeatedly yelling, “Get your hands up! Get your f**king hands up!” after Brown is seen reversing his car, then driving it forward while he’s boxed in by police.
After Brown reversed his vehicle and then put it into drive again, crashing into one of the police vehicles, McConnell fired twelve shots into the car.
Once he fired his final round, McConnell immediately called for medical assistance for Brown. Several minutes pass before EMS teams extricate Brown from the vehicle. Authorities say Brown later died at the hospital.
After the shooting, former Cobb County Police Chief Tim Cox said Brown was pulled over because officers “observed the vehicle driving erratically and posing a threat to motoring and pedestrian traffic in the area.”
The GBI also stated that Brown “attempted to get away and hit multiple police vehicles” and “refused to comply” with traffic stop procedures before speeding away.
Attorneys for Brown’s family said the Cobb County District Attorney’s Office presented incomplete evidence to a grand jury in December 2022. GBI investigators didn’t finish their investigation until September 2023.
“As a former prosecutor, I have no idea why anyone would take a case to the grand jury before the investigation was complete unless you wanted that case to fail,” attorney Bernarda Villalona said. “It’s clear that the District Attorney’s Office didn’t care what evidence the GBI found. They weren’t going to use it anyway.”
The grand jury ultimately concluded that there were “no grounds for charges against the officers involved.”
“This isn’t justice,” attorney Crystal Carey remarked. “It’s a bait and switch of the worst kind and Devonte Brown’s family deserves better.”
“How many times have we heard the police and prosecutors say that we have to be patient and wait for all the facts to come in before we make a decision?” attorney Chanel Cherry-Lassiter said. “Apparently, that’s true for every case except this one.”
However, Cobb County District Attorney Flynn Broady disputed the claims in an interview with 11 Alive. He said September 2023 is when the evidence was returned to police.
“We actually got the GBI investigation in January of 2022. We didn’t take it to the grand jury until December 2022. So we had the report, and we had the investigating agent testify at the grand jury hearing,” Broady said.
Still, the attorneys said there still parts missing from the grand jury’s presentation.
Brown’s family did announce plans to file a lawsuit but have not yet shared the names of the defendants or the allegations they’ll specify in their case.
