By Canadian Press

Missouri governor commutes sentence of white police officer convicted of fatally shooting Black man

Dec 20, 2024 | 3:55 PM

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri’s governor commuted the sentence of a white Kansas City police officer who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the fatal shooting of a Black man whose death fueled racial justice protests.

Gov. Mike Parson commuted Eric DeValkenaere’s sentence to time served on Friday, weeks before he will leave office. The Missouri Department of Corrections confirmed DeValkenaere has been released from prison.

DeValkenaere was serving a six-year prison sentence. He was convicted in 2021 of killing 26-year-old Cameron Lamb as he backed into his garage. Lamb’s name was invoked frequently during racial injustice protests in Kansas City in 2020 following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Lamb’s family even met with then-President Donald Trump that year.

At trial, DeValkenaere testified that he fired his weapon on Dec. 3, 2019, after Lamb pointed a gun at another detective, Troy Schwalm, and that he believed his actions saved his partner’s life.

Prosecutors, however, argued that police shouldn’t have been on the property and staged the shooting scene to support their claims that Lamb was armed.

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Evidence presented during the trial, which was held without a jury at DeValkenaere’s request, showed that DeValkenaere kicked over a barricade to get into Lamb’s backyard.

The trial judge, Dale Youngs, said the officers had no warrant for Lamb’s arrest and had no search warrant or consent to be on the property. He called it a tragic case with troubling facts and said DeValkenaere and the officer with him escalated a situation that had been calmed. He didn’t address allegations that evidence had been planted.

DeValkenaere left the police force after his conviction but remained free on bond until he lost his appeal in October 2023. The Missouri Supreme Court subsequently declined to hear an appeal.

The Associated Press