CT state trooper acquitted in shooting death of man following 30-mile pursuit

Editor's note: Previously, this article noted that Trooper North is no longer a working trooper, but that information is incorrect. We have updated the article to reflect the information that Trooper North is, in fact, still active duty.

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MILFORD, CT - A Connecticut State Police trooper has been acquitted in a case where he was charged with the fatal on-duty shooting of a 19-year-old after a motor vehicle pursuit four years ago, the New York Times reported. 

Trooper Brian North was acquitted by a jury in Milford Superior Court last week in the death of Mubarak Soulemane on Jan.15, 2020. The incident occurred after Soulemane led state and local police on a 30-mile pursuit on I-95 that started in Norwalk, Connecticut, and ended in West Haven, also in Connecticut. 

The six-person jury found North not guilty on all charges, which included manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide. Soulemane, who was shot seven times, allegedly had schizophrenia. North was the first Connecticut law enforcement officer to be charged in a fatal shooting in almost 20 years. 

The shooting took place after Soulemane crashed the stolen car into another vehicle on the busy interstate highway and was boxed in by state and local police. Police say Soulemane was sat motionless inside the car as law enforcement personnel surrounded the vehicle, weapons drawn, CT Mirror reported. 

A West Haven officer smashed out the passenger side window of the car, at which point Soulemane pulled a knife from his pocket. North, feeling the two officers on the passenger side were at risk of their lives from Soulemane pulling the knife and acting erratically, discharged his service weapon, striking Soulemane in the chest. 

The inspector general, however, which is a new office in the State of Connecticut created after the George Floyd overdose death, saw things differently than the officers who were actually on the scene. Relying on video evidence, Robert Devlin said North acted prematurely and recklessly by shooting Soulemane, claiming no officers were within reach of the knife in his hand. 

Devlin insisted North’s claim he shot Soulemane to save the lives of other officers in the vicinity of the car was merely a legal excuse that North, his attorneys, and Connecticut State Police representatives concocted after they had a chance to review body camera footage of the shooting. 

As part of his flawed reasoning for charging North, Devlin claimed that two statements North provided to other officers after the shooting never mentioned he shot Soulemane out of fear another officer would be stabbed in the neck or face. Devlin has clearly never faced a life-or-death situation and the related post-traumatic effect this has on someone. 

Frank Riccio, North’s lead defense attorney, disputed Devlin’s reasoning, noting the West Haven officer who broke the window attempted several times to open the locked passenger door before North fired his weapon. He also pointed out that Soulemane had the “wingspan” to reach the officers outside the passenger door.” 

“There was a clear path,” Riccio said. 

Both sides of the case presented expert witnesses in the trial's final days. 

During closing arguments, Riccio said the actions of North and the other officers were being picked apart by prosecutors using cherry-picked video evidence that was enhanced and played frame by frame instead of in real time, which would have painted an accurate picture of what the officers were facing. 

While prosecutors and Devlin had the luxury of being removed from the scene, Trooper North was dealing with an adrenalin rush, traffic driving by, sirens blaring, and emergency lights flashing. In addition, only 35 seconds passed between the stop of Soulemane’s stolen vehicle and the fatal shots. 

Again, Devlin, never having been in that position, claimed North and the other officers should have attempted to “de-escalate” the situation, an easy decision to make sitting behind a desk in Hartford. 

“Thirty-five seconds. That’s how long he lived after the car stop [accident]. What could have caused that?” Devlin asked in his closing arguments. “What caused it was Brian North’s extreme indifference to human life,” he continued, citing the state statute chapter and verse. 

Conversely, Riccio used the same time frame to argue that North didn’t have time to formulate a plan, noting that North was forced by Soulemane’s actions to make a split-second decision based on his prior police training. 

“This couldn’t have been done any differently,” Riccio told the jury. 

Soulemane’s history of mental illness played little into the closing arguments for either side, although Riccio did briefly address it. He told jurors that while some (including Devlin) may have used that illness as a basis for showing more patience on behalf of the officers, including North, they had no way of knowing his history of schizophrenia as the incident drew to its fateful conclusion. 

Riccio did address the circumstances that led up to the shooting, pointing out that Soulemane had shown the knife at a store in Norwalk and that he had stolen the vehicle involved in the pursuit from a Lyft driver in what was reported to the State Police as a carjacking. Given the information North and the other officers had, it was reasonable for their sense of danger to be heightened as the incident drew near its conclusion. 

Devlin, however, dismissed that and merely claimed that Soulemane was a “kid with a knife,” and didn’t deserve to lose his life. 

“There’s this notion kind of in the shadows of this case that because of misdeeds [an armed carjacking] in Norwalk or somewhere else on Interstate 95, Mubarak Soulemane forfeited the protection of the law,” Devlin asserted. “That’s not true, and that is a disturbing assertion.” 

Riccio, however, said that North would be haunted by the shooting for the rest of his life. 

“He’s still shaken,” Riccio said. “This is not something that he will ever live down. It was a very traumatic experience.” 

For the trooper, the not guilty verdict isn’t the end of the road. Soulemmane’s family has filed a $10 million wrongful death lawsuit in the case.