Prosecutor: Ex-Balch Springs officer was ‘angry and dangerous’ when he shot teen

Then-Balch Springs police officer Roy Oliver was angry and dangerous when he lifted his rifle, got into a shooting position and fired five rounds into a car that was moving away from him on April 29, 2017, prosecutor Michael Snipes said Thursday morning.

Oliver, 38, is on trial this week in the fatal shooting of Jordan Edwards, 15, as Edwards sat in the passenger seat of his father’s Impala. Edwards’ brother was driving.

Opening arguments got underway Thursday morning.

During opening statements Thursday morning, Snipes said the events leading up to Edwards’ death actually began before April 29 when a boy living in the 12000 block of Baron Drive learned his parents would be out of town that night.

He planned a party. Invites were sent through SnapChat and Instagram. Students from five different high schools were invited.

Edwards was a freshman football player and was excited to go.

He and his brother got permission from their dad, who gave them the car keys.

“Dad knows he has good kids, and they won’t get in trouble,” Snipes said.

Edwards, his brother and their two best friends left for the party at 9. When they arrived it was already too crowded to park in front of the house, so they stopped at a nearby intersection.

They paid a $2 cover and by 9:30 p.m. the boys were inside with 150-300 other teenagers. “They weren’t gangbanging,” Snipes said.

They were having fun. But at 11 o’clock, Snipes said a neighbor got tired of the traffic, so police were called.

Oliver was one of the responding officers. The other was Tyler Gross. When they got inside the house, teenagers started to leave. Gross had a conversation with the resident, which Snipes described as pleasant.

At 11:17 p.m., the officers heard 12 shots fired outside. It wouldn’t be learned until later that the shots came from a nearby nursing home — not the party.

Gross began to walk up the hill toward the gunshots. But Oliver grabbed his rifle from his patrol car and began to run.

Before the shots were ever fired — Edwards and his friends were already back in their car. They tried to leave, but Baron Street was blocked by police cars. They began to slowly back up, which caught the attention of Gross and Oliver.

At 11:18:28 p.m., Snipes said Oliver “runs to his shooting position” by the car.

“(Oliver) already made up his mind that he was going to shoot,” Snipes said.

Meanwhile, Gross tried to get the Impala to stop, but the teenagers were scared. They had been told to leave the party and were trying to do so.

At 11:18:33, the car starts to move away front Oliver. One second later, Edwards says the last three words he’ll ever speak.

“Duck, get down.”

At that moment, Gross tried to grab the Impala and broke the window. Oliver started to shoot.

The second round hit Edwards in the back of his head.

All five rounds were discharged within .934 seconds, Snipes said.

He said when the shots were fired, the car was driving away from Gross and Oliver — and during the last three shots, it had already passed them.

“No reasonable police officer would have engaged,” he said.

Edwards’ brother drove away and was soon stopped. He told the responding officers that his brother was dead, and he begged not to be murdered.

The boys didn’t drink or do drugs that night, Snipes said.

He told jurors they’d see evidence that includes video analysis, body camera footage, ballistics and witness statements.

The trial is expected to last a week.

Earlier, the judge in the case declined a defense motion to delay the trial. Defense lawyers said they needed more time to look through the thousand pages of discovery, images and video files provided by prosecutors in the last two weeks.

They filed a separate last-minute appeal to the 5th District Court of Appeals in Dallas saying the indictments were invalid, but the court had yet to rule on that by Thursday morning so the trial went forward.

Oliver is also charged with four counts of aggravated assault.

Watch the proceedings live at lawandcrime.com.

This story was originally published August 16, 2018 at 10:13 AM with the headline "Prosecutor: Ex-Balch Springs officer was ‘angry and dangerous’ when he shot teen."