Legal Issues

Park Police officers who killed Bijan Ghaisar were told before pursuit he wasn’t suspect in fender bender, recording shows

Prosecutors argue that officers violated so many policies they weren’t performing their official duties, shouldn’t receive federal immunity

By Tom Jackman
Today at 8:00 a.m. EDT

U.S. Park Police Officers Lucas Vinyard and Alejandro Amaya were working their overnight shift covering the George Washington Memorial Parkway when the call came over the radio. “Car 212,” the dispatcher said shortly after 7:30 p.m., “southbound GW Parkway at Slaters Lane, I got a motor vehicle hit-and-run. ... The striking vehicle is a black Jeep that has rear end damage.”

Moments later, at 7:34 p.m. on Nov. 17, 2017, the officers spotted the Jeep with the vanity license plate “BIJAN.” But the dispatcher had new information. “Correction on all of this,” she told Vinyard and Amaya. “The black Jeep left the scene, but he is not the striking vehicle. The red Toyota on the scene is the striking vehicle.”

One of the officers acknowledged the correction, and repeated the “BIJAN” license plate they were now following. “All right, 10-4,” the dispatcher said, then reminding, “That’s the vehicle that left the scene, that was struck.” ... “Copy,” one of the officers said. “He’s not stopping.”

And so the soon-to-be fatal pursuit of Bijan Ghaisar, the 25-year-old driver of the Jeep Grand Cherokee, was launched in Alexandria. Twice, facing the officers’ guns, Ghaisar stopped and then drove off. Then, during a third stop in a Fairfax County neighborhood, both officers fired their weapons at Ghaisar’s Jeep as it slowly moved away from them, a Fairfax police video shows. He was killed.

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By Tom Jackman
Tom Jackman has been covering criminal justice for The Washington Post since 1998 and anchors the True Crime blog. He previously covered crime and courts for the Kansas City Star. Twitter https://twitter.com/TomJackmanWP