A former police officer in Arlington, Texas has been indicted in the shooting death of a local woman. As seen on body cam footage, then-Officer Ravi Singh was responding to a call about an unresponsive woman lying on the ground.
“Hello, are you okay?” he asked Margarita Victoria Brooks in the August 1, 2019 incident. Singh asked if the dog at the scene was hers. The canine approached him.
“Get back,” Singh said, pulling out his gun, and opening fire.
Authorities said he grazed the dog, but also hit Brooks, who died from a gunshot wound to the chest.
Now Singh, who resigned from the police department last November, faces a charge of criminally negligent homicide.
“Everything about this call is an absolute tragedy,” then-Police Chief Will Johnson said shortly after the fatal shooting. (He has since retired.)
Brooks, 30, was homeless, but a regular in the area. Brooks’s friend Larry Hamilton said she was loving to her and her boyfriend’s dog. The canine “was her soul,” and she made sure to feed the animal before she ate, Hamilton told The Star Telegram.
“She was a good-hearted person,” he said.
“Officers responding to welfare checks should not be so quick to use their deadly weapons in situations that do not call for use of force,” Brooks’s family said in a statement after the indictment, according to Fox 7 Austin. “Our hope is not only that this officer is held responsible for Maggie’s death, but that the Arlington Police Department is also held accountable for its lack of training and procedures in responding to welfare checks.”
[Screengrab via CBS DFW and Arlington Police Department]
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