MIAMI – Prosecutors cleared a Miami police officer in the March 7, 2024 shooting of a man experiencing a mental health crisis in the Liberty City neighborhood.
Prosecutors said Officer Kassandra Mercado was justified in shooting 47-year-old Donald Armstrong.
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Armstrong, a memorandum from the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office states, was wielding a “sharp homemade weapon,” refused commands to drop it and was closing in on Mercado when she opened fire, striking Armstrong six times.
The memo ― available to read at the bottom of this page ― includes photos of the object, which prosecutors said “could have been used to cause serious bodily harm to the responding officers or other civilians present” at a home in the 5700 block of Northwest Seventh Court.
Armstrong survived the shooting. Police initially arrested him on charges of aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer and resisting an officer without violence, but prosecutors dropped the case months later.
He admitted he was “under the influence and mentally out of my mind” at the time but said what happened to him is a “prime example” of officers failing to “de-escalate the situation” in instances like his.
Read the memo: