DA: No charges for CMPD officers who shot, killed man pointing gun

CHARLOTTE — The police officers who killed a west Charlotte man holding an empty gun in December will not be criminally charged, the Mecklenburg County District Attorney’s Office said Tuesday.

On Dec. 16, 2023, officers were called for a fight between two people at Catherine Simmons Avenue at Beatties Ford Road. They were told someone was shooting and heard gunfire in the area.

At the scene, police said they told a man with a gun to repeatedly drop it but instead, he raised it. CMPD said that’s when the officers fired multiple shots, hitting the man.

The man, who was identified as 33-year-old Sanrico McGill, died of his injuries.

In their report released Tuesday, the Mecklenburg County DA said they will not pursue criminal charges against the officers.

The DA said it was McGill’s mom who called 911. She told CMPD her son was not mentally well and said she had been waiting on police to serve him with involuntary commitment paperwork.

When officers arrived, they said McGill’s mom and two brothers came out of an apartment. Officers told McGill to come outside and when he did, he was “in an extremely agitated state, yelling from the front porch and the steps to his residence,” the DA said.

McGill went back inside and returned with a pistol, which he raised in the direction of his brother and appeared to be racking the slide. Four responding officers fired their guns at McGill, the report says.

The DA said McGill’s pistol was later found to have been unloaded and investigators found an empty magazine for the gun on the sidewalk leading up his apartment. They also found two spent cartridge cases at his front door.

But the DA ruled the officers, “could not and did not know that the decedent’s firearm was no longer loaded.”

The officers said they fired their guns because there was a threat to bystanders, to McGill’s brother, and to officers across the street.

“As such, it was entirely reasonable for Officers DeVries, Werchek, Carson, and Fisher to believe that the decedent posed an imminent threat of great bodily harm or death to his brother when he appeared to rack the firearm and point it in his brother’s direction,” the report concludes.

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