MINNEAPOLIS– Nyra Fields-Miller was preparing breakfast for her family last weekend when the county attorney’s office called with an urgent request to speak to her in person. Hours later, officials told her that prosecutors had dismissed murder and manslaughter charges against the Minnesota state trooper who shot her son last summer.
On Tuesday, one day after Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty defended her initial decision In charging and later dropping the charges against the soldier who killed Ricky Cobb II, Cobb’s family said officials failed them and once again failed to hold law enforcement accountable.
“Black people in this country are often not given a sense of what justice looks like,” said Bakari Sellers, an attorney for the family. Be just, we tend, only to be abandoned again.”
Sellers and Cobb’s family criticized Moriarty and Democratic Gov. Tim Walz — who publicly spoke to prosecutors about the case. They also said the family plans to ask the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division to investigate the shooting.
Cobb, a 33-year-old black man, died after Trooper Ryan Londregan, a white man, shot him as he tried to drive away from a traffic stop. Troopers stopped Cobb on Interstate 94 in Minneapolis on July 31 because his car’s lights were off. Then they discovered that the A Spring Lake Park man was wanted for violating a domestic restraining order in neighboring Ramsey County. Londregan shot Cobb twice as Cobb tried to drive away after troopers ordered him out of his car.
The shooting added to political unrest surrounding law enforcement in a city still reeling from the police killing of George Floyd four years ago. The voters chose Moriarty, a former chief public prosecutor for the province, in 2022 on a platform for police reform.
On Monday, Walz told reporters that he would have used his power to take Moriarty’s case and hand it to the attorney general’s office if she had not dropped the charges. She accused Walz of interfering in the case – a claim he denied.
Moriarty said a newly filed defense claim that Londregan believed Cobb was reaching for Londregan’s gun, along with new testimony from state patrol officials supporting claims that the soldier was following his training, made the case impossible to prove. On Tuesday, Sellers said the body camera video of the episode should have long ago revealed to prosecutors what Londregan might allege in his defense.
Cobb’s family has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in april, claiming that the stop and shoot were unjustified. That lawsuit is still ongoing.
Holding officers accountable is still a tall order, even in the county for which Derek Chauvin was convicted Floyd’s murder in 2020said Michelle Gross, president of Communities United Against Police Brutality.
“Even after becoming the epicenter of an international movement against police brutality, our community still cannot get justice against officers who use excessive force, including deadly force,” Gross said. “Again, because it’s a cop and there’s politics about it. families have no chance of justice.”
Londregan, who was free by his own recognition, remains on paid leave while the State Patrol reviews the shooting. His attorney, Chris Madel, said the officer acted heroically and plans to return to law enforcement.
As he stood before reporters on Tuesday, Cobb’s family and supporters said he should still be alive.
“My son was an excellent son to me. He was mature and had ambitions. He was a father, and he was a human being, a working human being,” Fields-Miller said. ‘Make it meaningful.