Prosecutors say officers justified

Monroe police officers were justified in fatally shooting fugitive Harold McCord Jr. and will face no criminal charges, Snohomish County prosecutors decided this morning.

“When someone who violently escaped custody with a considerable amount of outside help is screaming at you that he has a gun, and points something at you that looks a lot like a gun, it is not a crime if you shoot him,” said Mark Roe, the county’s chief criminal deputy prosecutor.

That decision follows a King County inquest jury’s unanimous verdict Monday that McCord appeared to be pointing a gun at police, and officers believed he was an imminent threat when they fired at him.

McCord, who’d escaped the day before from the Pierce County Courthouse in Tacoma, was hiding in a Monroe apartment when a team of Monroe and Bothell officers went to arrest him June 24.

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