After days of prosecutors making their case to jurors that Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke committed first-degree murder in 2014 when he shot the black teenager 16 times, attorneys for the white officer are presenting their own evidence. Their contention: The teenager was a violent, dangerous, knife-wielding suspect on “a rampage” whom Van Dyke was forced to kill. But prosecutors have argued that that McDonald’s past is irrelevant because Van Dyke did not know anything about the teen when he shot him on Oct. 20, 2014. One officer who encountered McDonald before Van Dyke arrived testified that the teenager “looked deranged” and wouldn’t look at officers as they followed him. Some see the defence strategy as darker than just trying to show Van Dyke was acting in self-defence.

Source: National Post September 27, 2018 04:52 UTC