AUSTIN, Texas — A grand jury decided not to indict multiple officers who fatally shot at a 21-year-old Louisiana man in an alley outside a Sixth Street club in downtown Austin in 2018, the Travis County district attorney's office announced.
Before he was shot, Aquantis "Ajay" Griffin raised a gun in the direction of the police and ignored all commands to drop the weapon, the DA's office said in a statement Friday. The officers shot Griffin 30 times, according to his family's lawyers.
"The district attorney's office takes the work of presenting all facts and evidence to a grand jury very seriously," Travis County District Attorney José Garza said. "In this case, an independent group of members of the Travis County community heard the evidence and law and decided that the conduct of the officers was not unlawful."
Griffin's family has called the shooting "a hail of gratuitously excessive gunfire" in a lawsuit filed against the city of Austin and eight of the nine officers involved.
"As soon as they fired, he went down immediately, and the gun went skidding across the street," said Scott Hendler, the family's attorney. "And yet they fired 42 more times, hitting him at least 25 more times, and that's the conduct that clearly violated his civil rights."
Hendler also disagrees with the assertion by the DA's office that Griffin ignored police commands.
"He didn't have a chance to ignore them," Hendler said. "He didn't have a chance to respond to them."
U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel dismissed the case against the officers but not the city. Hendler intends to file a motion to reconsider.
The Austin police officers involved are Joseph Cast, Justin Halbach, Joseph Moran, Lewis Holland, Wesley Devries, Alberto Martinez, Daniel Mathis, Christopher Salacki and Stephen Johnson.
A year before Griffin's death, Cast also was present at the fatal shooting of 46-year-old Mauris DeSilva in July 2019 at the Spring condominiums in downtown Austin. He had used a stun gun on DeSilva before two other officers shot him.
Griffin had traveled to Austin from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to attend a performance on Sixth Street by his childhood friend, his attorneys said.
In the wee hours of Aug. 18, 2018, two groups confronted each other behind the Terminal 6 nightclub, in the 300 block of East 6th Street. The confrontation escalated, and one person began firing a weapon.
Police who had been dispatched to the scene saw Griffin running from the scene with a gun, so they began chasing Griffin down the back alley, giving him commands to drop the gun, the DA's office said.
Other officers positioned at the end of the alley heard the gun shots and drew their weapons when they saw Griffin coming towards them with a gun in his hand, according to the DA's office.
Griffin ran toward the officers and a crowd of civilians, then turned the corner, which is when he raised his weapon in the direction of the police, prompting police to shoot at him, the DA's office said.
According to video from the scene, multiple people in the area were ignoring officers' shouted commands, which were confusing and overlapping, Hendler said.
The video shows Griffin's hand swing around in an arc with his body, "a natural body movement when making a sharp turn while running," the civil suit says.
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