A former Atlanta police officer who fatally shot an unarmed man while working on an FBI task force nearly four years ago was indicted Friday on murder and other charges, officials said.
Sung Kim, a 26-year-veteran of the police department, shot Jimmy Atchison Jan. 22, 2019, while working on a fugitive task force. Atchison, a 21-year-old father of two, was wanted for stealing a woman’s cellphone at gunpoint, but did not have a weapon on him when he was killed.
Kim, who retired from APD months after the shooting, was indicted late Friday on one count of felony murder, one count of involuntary manslaughter and one count of violating his oath of office, a spokesman for the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office confirmed.
A GBI investigation determined Atchison was given two conflicting commands as he hid from authorities inside a friend’s broom closet at a northwest Atlanta apartment complex. One task force member told him to come out with his hands up. Another member told him not to move, according to family attorney Tanya Miller.
Henri Hollis
Henri Hollis
As Atchison stepped out of the closet with his hands up, Kim fatally shot him once in the face, Miller said. Kim later told investigators he believed Atchison was holding a weapon, though no one had seen him with a gun that day.
Kim and several other officers who were part of the FBI task force had chased Atchison through the complex just before the shooting, according to a report from the Fulton DA’s public integrity unit.
Kim was not wearing a body camera when he shot Atchison. At the time, the FBI did not sanction the use of body cameras, despite APD’s policy requiring all of its officers to wear them. The FBI has since changed its policy, allowing federally deputized officers to activate their body camera while serving warrants, executing searches or making arrests.
Former Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard had said he was prepared to seek charges against Kim in March 2020, but that became impossible after COVID-19 suspended virtually all grand jury proceedings in the state for more than a year.
When current DA Attorney Fani Willis took office the following year, she said that her staff was working through a “large backlog” of police use-of-force incidents. She has since indicted numerous current and former law enforcement officers in years-old cases.
Atchison’s father, Jimmy Hill, never gave up hope that charges would be brought in his son’s death. He called repeatedly for the DA’s office to present the case to a grand jury and regularly held rallies outside the courthouse calling for Kim’s indictment.
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