After a wheelchair-bound elderly man allegedly stole from an Arizona Walmart, a 32-year-old police officer named Ryan Remington used his standard-issued firearm to murder the man by shooting him nine times in the back and side. The victim, Richard Lee Richards, who was a career criminal, died from the gunshot wounds inflicted by the trigger-happy police officer. The senior citizen was in the process of shoplifting a toolbox from the Tucson Walmart location when Remington killed him in cold blood.
In the wake of the shooting, Remington was fired from his post at the Tucson Police Department. And on Wednesday, August 2022, he was indicted by a grand jury for “recklessly” killing Richards. Body camera footage shown at the grand jury hearing revealed that the officer fired nine rounds at the fleeing suspect’s back and side during the shoplifting incident that occurred on November 30, 2021.
According to a report, Richards flashed a knife at a store employee who asked to see a receipt for the toolbox. Instead, Richards showed the employee his weapon and said, “Here’s your receipt.”
Footage shows Richards fleeing the Walmart in his wheelchair as he heads toward the parking lot of a nearby Lowe’s home improvement store. At this point, two officers confront Richards and ask him to stop.
“He’s got a knife in his other hand,” someone calls out in the body camera footage. Seconds later, Remington unloads his firearm in the wheelchair-bound senior citizen’s back.
Meanwhile, Rick Resch, a lawyer for the Richards family, confirmed that the family is glad that the officer will need to answer for his crime.
“It has been a long and difficult past nine months for Mr. Richards’s family, but they are relieved that former Officer Ryan Remington has been indicted and will face the prospect of justice for the shooting and killing of Mr. Richards,” Resch said in a statement.
In Arizona, manslaughter is considered a class-two felony with a minimum of seven years in prison. The definition of the term is “recklessly causing the death of another person.”
Meanwhile, the police officer’s legal team is planning to fight the charge.
“Manslaughter doesn’t even fit,” Remington’s lawyer Mike Storie told KVOA. “I don’t want to get into legal arguments, but it’s a legal fiction. So I’ll be very interested to read the grand jury transcript and find out what went on in that room when I was not present.”
The lawyer added, “He did have a taser, but in his mind, he couldn’t use it because he didn’t feel he had the proper spread to deploy it, with the wheelchair between him and Richards.”
Tucson Mayor Regina Romero is glad the bad cop is going down for his crime.
“Now that the Grand Jury has issued an indictment and Ryan Remington will face criminal charges, it is a matter for the courts to adjudicate,” the Tucson mayor tweeted.
The trial is set to begin on October 24, 2022. Officer Ryan Remington will be facing up to 21 years in prison if he’s convicted of manslaughter.
