Featured photo: A photo illustration of Nasanto Crenshaw.
On Monday afternoon, a federal appeals court overturned a lower court’s decision to dismiss the case against Greensboro Police Officer Matthew Sletten who shot and killed 17-year-old Nasanto Crenshaw on Aug. 17, 2022.
As reported by TCB, Crenshaw was shot and killed by Sletten during a traffic stop in 2022.
Interpretation of the events in the ensuing minutes after Sletten pulls Crenshaw over have been contested by both the police department and Doriety’s attorneys. In April 2023, 104 videos were released by the city that captured what happened during the incident.
The city states that Crenshaw drove the car towards Sletten, who was outside of his patrol car, and that Sletten shot Crenshaw to defend himself.
Attorneys for the family say that Crenshaw had “clearly turned away from Sletten” and that the officer “wasn’t in the car’s path” when he shot Crenshaw through the windshield and side window. Sletten fired three shots, all of which hit Crenshaw in the right forearm, right-side ribcage and the right side of his neck. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
According to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, the lower court’s decision, written by US District Court Judge Catherine Eagles, was wrong in dismissing the lawsuit against Sletten because the recordings did not “blatantly contradict” the allegations brought forth by Wakita Doriety, Crenshaw’s mother.
“Based on the plaintiff’s allegations, a reasonable officer in Officer Sletten’s position would not think that the stolen car, which was moving away from the officer, posed a significant and immediate threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer that would justify his conduct of firing one shot through the car’s windshield and additional shots through the car’s passenger window,” the decision states.
Read the full decision here.
In March 2023, Doriety filed a wrongful death civil lawsuit against Sletten and the city of Greensboro that stated that her son’s Constitutional rights were violated. Doriety is represented by attorneys Harry Daniels, John Burris and Chimeaka White.
Reacting to the appeals court’s decision, attorney White sent TCB this statement:
“Nasanto did not deserve to die in this manner,” White wrote. “As I have always stated, Nasanto was not trying to use the car as a weapon to hit Officer Sletten. We are grateful that the United States Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals got this one right.”
In July 2023, Judge Eagles granted two orders to dismiss the case. In one decision, Eagles granted governmental immunity to the city. In the other order, Eagles upheld Sletten’s use of force as justified, stating that the “split-second judgment to fire a weapon when faced with an immediate and obvious threat of serious physical harm from a deadly weapon was not unreasonable as a matter of law.”
The federal court upheld the district court’s dismissal of the case against the city.
The case against Sletten now heads back to district court.
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