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Following a judicial inquest into the incident, Cambridge Police Officer Liam McMahon will face no criminal charges for fatally shooting 20-year-old Sayed Arif Faisal in January 2023, the Middlesex District Attorney's Office announced on Thursday, Oct. 5
On the day of the incident, Wednesday, Jan. 4, officers had been pursuing Faisal through the streets of Cambridge for around ten minutes while he had been cutting himself with a foot-long knife blade, according to a report by Judge John Coffey.
During the chase, Faisal never responded to officers' commands to stop and drop the knife and ignored authorities' attempts to communicate with him. When an officer then fired a less-lethal shot at him, Faisal continued to move toward McMahon while holding a knife out toward him, prompting McMahon to fatally shoot him, Coffey wrote.
Following the fatal shooting, Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan requested a judicial inquest into the incident in order to make sure it was examined by an impartial third party.
This inquest resulted in Coffey issuing his report, in which he wrote that McMahon's actions were "objectively reasonable."
"At the moment that Officer McMahon fired his weapon, a reasonable law enforcement officer in the same position would reasonably believe that he, along with his fellow officers and others, were in imminent danger of being seriously injured or killed," Coffey continued, adding that his actions did not constitute a criminal act.
Ryan has since forwarded the results of the inquest to the Cambridge Police Department, which issued a statement on the findings.
"There is no doubt that this is a tragedy for our entire community. My heart goes out to Faisal’s family and everyone who has been impacted," said Cambridge Police Commissioner Christine Elow.
"No officer ever wants to be put in the position where they have to use fatal force, and if it happens it stays with each of us forever. This tragedy has impacted our entire department," Elow continued.
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