Hemingway police officer Cassandra Dollard had already been fired twice before as a cop when she shot and killed a man after slipping and falling and fearing for her life because he had “something in his hands.”
That something turned out to be about four or five dollar bills, according to the attorney representing the man’s family.
Now Dollard is facing voluntary manslaughter charges for the shooting death of Robert Langley Jr. on February 6, who was unarmed when he was shot trying to crawl out of a car after it had crashed following a high-speed chase.
She was also terminated, raising the question as to why she was even hired in the first place considering her dismal employment record.
Earlier this week, State Law Enforcement Division released dashcam footage from that night after refusing to do for more than a month.
The video shows Dollard attempting to pull Langley over for failing to come to a complete stop at 1 a.m. But Langley speeds off, sparking a pursuit of more than 100 mph before Langley loses control and winds up in a ditch.
At one point, Langley is trying to crawl out of the car through the passenger’s side but the cop is pointing her gun at him, ordering him to remain in the car.
Then she slips and falls as Langley continues crawling out of the car.
“Don’t you come out!” she says before firing a shot, striking him in the chest.
“You had something in your hand, sir. What was in your hand?” she continues to ask him as he can be heard groaning in pain.
Later in the video she is inside the patrol car on the phone with a supervisor, explaining what had taken place.
“He’s got something in his hands, I don’t know what it is,” she tells him.
“I fall, I say, ‘stay in the car,’ he’s coming out the car so at this point, I don’t know what he got in his hand but he keeps coming out the car on me.”
The 52-year-old cop was arrested only days after the incident and is facing two to 30 years in prison on the voluntary manslaughter charge.
Dollard who has been a cop in South Carolina since 1992 was hired by the Hemingway Police Department in September.
She was fired from the South Carolina Department of Public Safety in 2014 for “alleged violations of two policies related to discipline,” according to WBTW. She was also fired from the Johnsonville Police Department for “for poor performance.”
“They were negligent in hiring her,” said Bakari Sellers, the attorney representing Langley’s family, told WBTW.
“The state was negligent in certifying her. It’s a shame Robert had to die for her to lose a job she never should have had.”
Langley leaves behind 10 children and a three-month-old granddaughter.
“I don’t know what she was thinking,” his sister Nicola Langley told WBTW.
“I don’t know what was going on, but if she knew him, she would’ve known there was nothing to worry about. My brother’s not violent. Not evil. Not any of that.”
She claims he just drove off, but if she’s so hyper-aggressive that she’d shoot a guy for exiting a crashed car, and those disciplinary violations on her record, I have to wonder if she did something to make him fear for hus life when she pulled him over.