Prosecutor clears officer in driver's slaying outside west Little Rock hotel

The Pulaski County prosecuting attorney's office has cleared a Little Rock officer of criminal wrongdoing in the fatal shooting of a 22-year-old man last spring, according to a deputy prosecutor.

Little Rock officer Jonathan Gonzalez fatally shot Austin Snyder outside a west Little Rock hotel on April 5. The department said Snyder was shot inside a GMC Yukon after he rammed another vehicle and ignored commands to show his hands. Police said Gonzalez opened fire when Snyder dropped his right hand from the steering wheel to his right side.

Police were in the area searching for Snyder, who authorities said had multiple felony warrants, in the lead-up to the shooting, according to a department statement.

John Johnson, chief deputy prosecutor, said the Pulaski County prosecuting attorney's office has ruled the April shooting was justified. He said the office has sent a letter to the Little Rock Police Department informing the agency.

Johnson declined to discuss how the office arrived at the decision.

The lead-up to the April 5 shooting began when officers were in the area of the Extended Stay America on Kanis Road searching for Snyder, who had multiple felony warrants, according to a Police Department statement released the day after the shooting.

Officers had been informed Snyder was living out of hotels, the statement said. Officers were checking the parking lot of the hotel when they saw a GMC Yukon backed into a parking space, according to the statement.

Police started to approach the vehicle, according to the statement, "at which time the vehicle accelerated forward and rammed into another vehicle that happened to be driving through the parking lot, pushing it into a police vehicle."

Police said the driver, later identified as Snyder, was told to show his hands.

"The driver ignored these commands and dropped his right hand from the steering wheel to his right side," the statement said. "At that point one officer fired his service weapon at the driver of the Yukon."

Snyder, who was hit by the gunfire, was taken to a hospital but died shortly after arriving, police reported.

Passengers in the Yukon were reportedly not harmed. The statement said authorities recovered two handguns from the "front seat area" of the vehicle Snyder was driving.

Lt. Michael Ford, a Police Department spokesman, said Wednesday that Gonzalez is an officer at the department.

Last year, Little Rock police reported they would no longer include justifiable homicides within the city's homicide total, a change expected to lower future yearly totals for the department.

The April shooting was the third fatal shooting involving Little Rockofficer last year. The two previous officer-involved shootings have also been cleared by prosecutors.

In the first, officer Angela Everett fatally shot Gregory Childress after Childress tried to rob her at gunpoint last February, police said. Everett, who has since been promoted to sergeant, had been working off-duty and was wearing her police uniform at the time of the shooting.

The second came in March of last year, when officers Brian Osmundson and Samuel Hill fired at Michael Hornibrook in a downtown Little Rock alley. Hornibrook, who was fatally shot, had raised a gun toward the officers, the department said.

Metro on 02/15/2018