Retired D.C. police Lt. Jesse Porter Jr. made his first appearance in court Friday since his indictment on charges including second degree murder. The charges are related to the Aug. 4 deadly shooting of a trainee.
He was formally charged in court with second-degree murder while armed, unlawful discharge and possession of a firearm during a crime of violence or dangerous offense. Porter said he shot 25-year-old Maurica Manyan accidentally at Anacostia Library during a training exercise for library officers, according to court documents.
The charges come with a 12- to 24-year sentencing range, according to attorney Chelsea Lewis, who’s representing Manyan’s family. However, Lewis said Porter’s been offered a deal by prosecutors to plead guilty to involuntary manslaughter while armed. That charge carries a sentencing range of three to seven years.
“To think that, three years and somebody gets you back out on the street, that’s just not something that the family was happy to hear,” Lewis said. “We were grateful, at least, that the plea would require jail time, but three to seven is not what the family would like to see.”
Porter is due back in court on May 18 and has until then to decide whether to accept the plea or take the case to trial.
He was conducting the training as a private contractor. After the exercise, his training group was posing for a photo when Manyan interrupted them to fix her hair and face mask, court documents said. That’s when Porter grabbed a gun and shot her, later telling police he thought he’d grabbed his training gun.
Lewis said Manyan’s family is troubled by what they called the D.C. government’s negligence in this case, and that the training shouldn’t have even happened.
“Porter’s company did not have insurance at the time that these events took place. That is extremely disheartening,” she said. “The fact that the District of Columbia wouldn’t even take the time to make sure that someone who was training their own employees had insurance — that’s something that should be investigated, that’s something that should be looked into and that’s something that should have never happened.”
According to Lewis, the family has not been allowed to view surveillance video of the shooting.
“We’ve requested the video through FOIA request. We’ve requested the video through subsequent requests directly to the city,” Lewis said. “Letting the family see that in a controlled environment, there’s really no explanation why the city would not even respond to such a request.”
The footage was likely used as evidence for the grand jury, which upped Porter’s original charge of involuntary manslaughter to second-degree murder in its indictment, according to Lewis. She said whatever they saw on tape and heard from witnesses was enough to enhance the charges, which would require what she called “malice aforethought,” in the case of second-degree murder.
“The family is comfortable waiting as long as it takes for justice for their loved one,” Lewis said. “It’s been a long nine months that they’ve had to wait, even for just the indictment. So, they’re prepared to do whatever it takes to make sure that their daughter, cousin, sister, their legacy is preserved and that this really doesn’t happen again.”
WTOP’s Shayna Estulin and Megan Cloherty contributed to this report.
