SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The mother of Stephon Clark said she refuses to accept prosecutors' decision not to file criminal charges against the two Sacramento police officers who fatally shot an unarmed black man last year.
Sequette (suh-KWET) Clark said the officers who shot her 22-year-old son on March 18, 2018 after he ran from them into his grandparents' backyard should have been charged with homicide. Police said they thought Stephon had a gun, but investigators found only a cellphone.
"They executed my son," Sequette said. "It's not right."
Her comments came shortly after Sacramento County District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert announced the officers did lawfully used lethal force. The officers said they thought Clark, a vandalism suspect, had a gun and was advancing at them.
Sequette said the Clark family sat patiently for nearly a year, "allowing her an opportunity to do right and she has failed us."
During her press conference Schubert talked about what was found on Stephon's phone the days prior to his death. Schubert noted how he had made at-least two dozen online searches on suicide in the days leading up to his death. Schubert said she wasn't suggesting Clark's death was a suicide by cop, however, he was clearly in a "state of despair" and that it's "relevant" to their investigation. Through his phone, it was also found Stephon was involved in a domestic violence incident between himself and the mother of his children
"She wants to go on a smear campaign about his character, and his actions, and make public things him and his significant other were going through to justify or condone her officers' actions," Sequette said. "Whatever he [Stephon] was doing, whatever he was doing or on, whatever his character is or his actions prior to those police gunning him down, is nobody's business. That's not justification. That's not a permit to kill him. I don't care if he was a criminal. I don't care about that, none of that matters. What matters is how those officers came with lethal force around a corner on a vandalism call after my son and gunned him down when he had nothing but a cellphone in his hand."
Clark's family, including his two sons, his parents and his grandparents, filed a wrongful death lawsuit in January seeking more than $20 million from the city, Mercadal and Robinet, alleging that the officers used excessive force and that he was a victim of racial profiling.
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Se’Quette Clark, the mother of Stephon Clark, says she spoke with the district attorney in a private meeting on Saturday, March 2 - prior to the noon announcement of the release of the findings in the shooting death of Stephon Clark in 2018.