Four Montgomery County police officers who shot and killed a man at a McDonald’s drive-thru last summer will not be charged.
An investigation by the Howard County state’s attorney into the killing of Ryan LeRoux by those officers has finished, and a grand jury found that the shooting was “legally justified” under the circumstances, according to a statement from the Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s Office.
On July 17, police arrived at the restaurant on Flower Hill Way in Gaithersburg in response to a report that a person had not paid for his order and was refusing to leave the drive-thru line. A police officer went over to the Gaithersburg man’s vehicle and found him fully reclined in the driver’s seat with headphones on and both his hands on his cellphone.
The officer then got on the radio and said that he saw a gun on the front passenger seat of LeRoux’s vehicle. The officer asked the 21-year-old several times to open the passenger-side door, but he did not.
Other officers arrived and the car was identified as belonging to LeRoux. Investigators said that just after 10:45 p.m., a review of body camera footage shows an officer saying: “He just reached … I don’t know what he’s reaching for.” That officer then ducked and shouted, “He’s raised the gun!”
The body camera footage on that officer does not show LeRoux raising the gun due to a blocked view, but a view from another officer’s body camera shows LeRoux pointing something toward police briefly. Read more at WTOP.
