The deputy, Lauren Michael, a seven-year veteran of the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office, was charged Wednesday with felony assault and armed criminal action after she shot the woman, who was unarmed, several times in the back in an arrest attempt, according to prosecutors.
Michael claimed that the woman had Tasered her, but evidence proved otherwise, investigators found.
“Laws that protect law enforcement’s actions are a high hurdle for prosecutors to overcome,” Jean Peters Baker, the Jackson County prosecutor, said in a statement. “We believe, however, this case will meet that high bar.”
Michael was placed on unpaid leave pending the outcome of the criminal case, which is standard practice, the sheriff’s office said in a statement.
“Deputy Michael is presumed innocent unless proven guilty by a Court,” Sheriff Darryl Forté said on Twitter on Tuesday. She is a “respected member” of the sheriff’s office, he added.
In 2017, while off duty and working for a private security firm, Michael killed an unarmed man, Donald Sneed, 31, after he was accused of shoplifting at a Walmart in Raytown, Missouri. Sneed was wanted on felony warrants.
Michael Tasered him twice and shot him eight times while he was being held on the ground by two store employees, Jermaine Wooten, the lawyer for Sneed’s family, said Sunday. She was never charged, he added.
In that case, Michael said Sneed had tried to Taser her with her own weapon.
On Aug. 8, Brittany Simek, 25, a U.S. Coast Guard veteran working as a personal trainer, was riding on the back of an electric scooter on the wrong side of the road in Kansas City when a patrol car made a sharp turn in front of the scooter. The scooter slammed into the vehicle, knocking Simek and the other rider to the ground, her lawyer David Smith said Sunday.
A deputy immediately detained the other rider, a friend of Simek’s, and Simek decided to leave the scene, Smith said. She was not aware that police were looking for her, he added.
Deputies were advised not to chase Simek because the only charge they could bring was “failure to obey a lawful order by running,” according to prosecutors.
Michael, who canvased the area for Simek, found her nearly 20 minutes later sitting on concrete steps of a residence, prosecutors said.
The deputy jumped out of her vehicle with Taser in hand and told Simek to get on the ground, said Mike Yonke, another lawyer representing Simek. When Simek questioned her, Michael grabbed her braids, forced her to the ground and Tasered her stomach twice, he said.
Simek pushed the Taser away and tried to run, Yonke said. She was about 15 feet away, he said, when Michael fired five shots — three bullets hit Simek’s back, one hit the cellphone in her back pocket, and one missed.
After shooting Simek, Michael told a sergeant, “I am not as comfortable with this one as the last one,” according to prosecutors.
Michael later told investigators that Simek had grabbed the Taser and shocked her left leg, but Simek said that she had not taken the Taser and that she had no intention of hurting the officer, according to prosecutors.
Investigators found that both of the Taser’s cartridges had been deployed within 3 seconds, which did not support Michael’s account of the altercation, prosecutors said.
Doctors removed a bullet that was lodged in Simek’s lower back, and she will be recovering from a broken back for months, Yonke said. She won’t recover as quickly from the emotional trauma, he added.
Both Smith and Yonke, who have litigated police brutality and excessive force cases for more than 20 years, said this was the first time they had seen charges brought against an officer.
“There’s a woman without a record who served our country who was shot in the back by a police officer after breaking no laws,” Yonke said. “Brittany wants the deputy stopped, and she wants the sheriff’s department to do the right thing in the future. She doesn’t want this to happen to anyone else.”
Because of the similarities between the two episodes, prosecutors decided to reexamine the fatal 2017 shooting of Sneed.
Michael received awards from the sheriff’s department and the Metropolitan Chiefs and Sheriffs Association in 2018 for her handling of that altercation.
Gayle Carr-Sneed, Sneed’s mother, said she was grateful that the prosecutors were again looking into the death of her son.
“I have been saying for the last couple of years, How could she get by with this and how did she even live with herself?” Carr-Sneed said Sunday. “He was unarmed and when she shot him, the video showed he was just trying to crawl away.”
Carr-Sneed said police made her son out to be a thug, but he had never been charged.
“He made bad choices, but he had a heart of gold,” she said. “I hope justice is served.”
This article originally appeared in
.