29-05-2025
Patrick Lyoya's family speaks out after Kent County prosecutor's decision to not pursue retrial
The family of Patrick Lyoya, the 26-year-old immigrant who was shot and killed by a police officer in Grand Rapids three years ago, is speaking out after Kent County Prosecutor Chris Becker decided not to pursue a retrial last week.
The original trial ended in a hung jury earlier this month.
Both parents say they're still left broken after the jury was unable to come to a unanimous decision on former Grand Rapids police officer Christopher Schurr's second-degree murder charge, but they say there's still hope for justice with the civil trial that might still be a couple of years away.
"My heart was broken because I was in so much pain," said Dorcas Lyoya.
Those are the emotions of Patrick Lyoya's mother spoken through the family's interpreter after realizing there won't be a retrial for the former Grand Rapids police officer charged with second-degree murder of her son.
"Since the first one, we didn't get the right justice that we were looking for; maybe the second trial, we would find we'll get the justice we're looking for, but this decision really broke me," she said.
Grand Rapids police body camera footage from April 2022 sparked protests and opinions about whether the use of deadly force was justified. The jury couldn't agree unanimously, resulting in a mistrial, but Lyoya's father says his son's legacy will forever haunt Schurr.
"All the rest of his life, the blood of my son will be hanging on his head. He will walk the rest of his life with the blood of Patrick on his head," Patrick Lyoya said.
Attorneys claim that not pursuing a criminal retrial won't have a legal impact on the civil suit. They suggest they might even have an edge now that Schurr no longer qualifies for Fifth Amendment claims.
"People can plead the Fifth Amendment because they can say, 'I have the possibility of criminal charges hovering over me, and I don't want to testify.' He can't do that now because the criminal case is done. And so we're going to have an opportunity to depose him and to once again put on the record why it was he felt it was necessary to take an unarmed, not dangerous, not threatening individual's life that day," said attorney Chris Desmond.
Desmond says there is a different circumstance to prove under a different standard in the civil case than the one Becker had to reach in the criminal case, so their goal looks different than the case that resulted in a hung jury.
After everything we just learned and everything that was shared in the criminal case, attorneys say the civil case is essentially starting from scratch.
The civil case will start with a Rule 16 scheduling conference on June 17. Attorneys estimate the start of a civil trial is at least two years away.
