A deputy city marshal charged with murder in the shooting of a 6-year-old boy is asking a Louisiana judge to throw out his indictment. Derrick Stafford is saying he acted in self-defense by opening fire on a car driven by the boy's father.
Jeremy Mardis, the 6-year-old autistic boy shot by police during the November incident, was the youngest person shot by police in 2015. The boy's father, Christopher Few, was wounded after what officials described as a pursuit.
Body camera video that captured the shooting led to the arrests, police said. Louisiana State Police superintendent Col. Michael Edmonson called the video "extremely disturbing."
But a court filing by Derrick Stafford's attorneys says the police body camera video lacks audio for the first 27 seconds, making it impossible to determine if Stafford started shooting before or after Few raised his hands inside the car.
Stafford's lawyers claim the Few ignored officers' commands to stop and rammed into a vehicle that another deputy marshal, Norris Greenhouse Jr., was exiting.
Stafford and Greenhouse await separate trials on second-degree murder charges.
Second-degree murder carries a mandatory punishment of life in prison without parole, the attorney general said. A charge of attempted second-degree murder carries up to 50 years in prison.
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Greenhouse is free on $1 million bail, while Stafford remains jailed, NBC News reported.
