Alton Sterling

Alton Sterling, 37, a father of five who sold homemade CDs outside a Baton Rouge convenience store, was shot and killed by Officers Blane Salamoni and Howie Lake II on July 5, 2016, during a struggle after the two officers responded to a report of a man threatening someone with a gun. Cellphone video of the roughly 90-second encounter, showing Sterling pinned to the ground when he was shot, circulated widely and prompted nationwide protests. The Department of Justice declined to bring federal civil rights charges in May 2017. Nearly a year later, in March 2018, Louisiana's attorney general separately declined to bring state charges, calling the shooting “justifiable” and citing a toxicology report showing Sterling had drugs in his system. No one has ever been criminally charged in Sterling's death.

Baton Rouge, LA · East Baton Rouge Parish County

• 2016: Case opens — victim reported missing or found.
• Documented milestones (renewed investigation, media coverage, family advocacy) to be added as sourced.
• Present: case remains unresolved. No named suspect has been convicted.

• The struggle, the shooting, and Sterling's death outside the Triple S Food Mart, per cellphone video and the subsequent DOJ and state investigations.
• The DOJ's Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Louisiana announced in May 2017 that evidence was insufficient to prove the officers had willfully used unreasonable force, the standard required under federal civil rights law.
• Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry announced in March 2018, after reviewing the DOJ's evidence and conducting independent interviews, that his office would not bring state charges either, calling the officers' actions “justifiable.”
• East Baton Rouge District Attorney Hillar Moore recused his own office from the state review due to a professional relationship with one officer's parents, leaving the decision to the state attorney general.
• Sterling's family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city, its police department, and the two officers in June 2017.

• Whether Sterling was reaching for a firearm in his pocket, as the officers stated, versus the extent to which he was still resisting being restrained at the moment of the shooting, was disputed in witness and video interpretation and never tested at trial.
• The specific weight the toxicology findings cited by Attorney General Landry actually carried in the legal determination that the shooting was justifiable has been disputed by the family's attorneys and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
• Whether either officer faced internal departmental discipline separate from the criminal charging decisions has not been comprehensively documented publicly.

• Al Jazeera — “Alton Sterling shooting: No criminal charges for police officers”
• NBC News — “Alton Sterling Shooting: Justice Department Announces No Federal Charges”
• NAACP Legal Defense Fund — statement on the DOJ's decision not to charge
• Project Cold Case
• Murder Accountability Project
• NamUs