This is going back a ways, but the Barnes story reminded me of a case from 2004. I somehow read or heard a report that an off-duty officer had shot someone in a road-rage incident along Rockville Pike, where I spent way too many hours driving in my youth. I always wondered whether the officer was ever charged or convicted. Arthur Lloyd was an off-duty US Marshal and the man he shot, Ryan Stowers, was a Navy seaman. Rockville Pike is a main drag through Montgomery County MD, and the traffic can be fierce on a good day.
The altercation was sparked by a traffic incident on Rockville Pike and continued after Stowers and Lloyd turned into the shopping center lot. It is unclear whether the vehicles collided or the two drivers merely had a traffic argument.
Stowers pulled his red Chevrolet Camaro into the lot, not far from the A.C. Moore craft store, behind the dark-colored sport-utility vehicle that Lloyd was driving, with his wife and several children as passengers.
A shouting match turned into a fistfight, and Lloyd suffered a broken thumb, …
The Toyota driver said he had just eased his own car by the confrontation when the Camaro backed up and then lurched forward. He said he was about eight feet away when he heard the first of three shots, and he said that Lloyd fired into the Camaro from the rear.
“He shot the back of the car,” the driver said. “He shot the guy in the back, pretty much.”
Nachman-Senders said she turned back to Lloyd, who stood with the gun at his side. Then she heard a loud crash. She turned toward the noise and saw that the Camaro had hit a wall.
“I’m just in shock and disbelief. I can’t believe there’s a kid who was here one minute and then not the next,” she said. “I can’t believe that an argument could escalate this way so quickly. . . . How responsible was it for him to shoot like that in the middle of a busy parking lot?”
Washington Post, later
The wife of a deputy U.S. marshal who shot and killed a man after a traffic dispute in Montgomery County last week tried to restrain her husband before he opened fire, according to a police affidavit filed in court.
Washington Post, still later
Witnesses testified that, as Lloyd’s wife tried to hold him back, Lloyd went to his vehicle for his .40-caliber Glock service weapon, vowing: “I’m going to show him.”
…
Witnesses — some of whom returned to court yesterday to address the judge — said Lloyd looked more like an enraged motorist waving a gun around than a trained law enforcement officer. They said they, too, had been afraid.
Less than two hours after telling the judge they were deadlocked – then being ordered to continue deliberating – jurors acquitted Arthur Lloyd, 54, of first- and second-degree murder. The nine men and three women instead announced a guilty verdict for manslaughter, reckless endangerment and handgun charges …
I have never seen a law officer treated this way.” Said Matthew Fogg, who worked with Lloyd in the US Marshal’s Service and now leads a group that protests racism and corruption in law enforcement.
Apparently Lloyd was black and Stowers was white – but both men had documented trouble with their tempers:
Two police officers who had earlier run-ins with Stowers also testified … Stowers cursed and “went berserk” when he was asked to step outside of his car during a traffic stop.
… Lloyd’s past run-ins with the law were left out. Lloyd’s wife sought restraining orders against him in 1999 and 2001 after accusing him of assault – details that would be brought out when Lloyd is sentenced, prosecutors said.
Retired U.S. Marshal Arthur L. Lloyd was sentenced to 15 years in prison for shooting Navy Seaman Ryan Todd Stowers to death at the conclusion of a road rage incident in a Maryland shopping plaza outside of Washington, D.C.
Ann S. Harrington, administrative judge for the Montgomery Circuit Court, delivered a 25-year sentence Tuesday, but suspended 10 of the years, according to an Associated Press report.
…
Lloyd’s defense lawyers say they plan to appeal because they believe their client was acting as a federal officer during the row and that this issue was not raised during his trial.
Clearly there were no winners here, except as they say, the lawyers. Funny things show up in Google, like this snippet about an EEOC suit against US Marshals by African American Marshals protesting promotion decisions:
[Attorney David Sanford] got to know the Marshals’ Service through another headline case—his representation of Marshal Arthur Lloyd, charged with first-degree murder after a road rage incident on Rockville Pike in which, David says, a crazed man was driving a Camaro toward Lloyd and his family when Lloyd shot him. Sanford Wittels attorney Stefanie Roemer got Lloyd acquitted on the murder charge; he was convicted of manslaughter.
I know road rage can get to all of us but I think that cop should of had more self control.