Police officer charged after shooting shoplifter

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A police officer in the St. Louis suburb of Ladue, Mo., has been charged with second-degree assault after shooting a woman she claims was shoplifting.

Julia Crews was charged with the felony on Wednesday in the shooting of Ashley Hall who was injured in the incident. Crews is free on bail, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

The officer could face up to seven years in prison if convicted.

Crews was responding to a call about shoplifting, but Hall’s family said she was at the shopping center buying flowers for her mother’s birthday.

Hall was hospitalized after the shooting but is expected to survive, the Post-Dispatch reports.

Crews’ lawyer, Travis Noble, said his client thought she’d pulled out her Taser when she instead drew her gun and fired during the April 23 incident at a Ladue shopping center.

Noble said Crews warned Hall that she would use her Taser and Hall continued to run — an account that Hall verified, the news organization reported. But Hall never posted a threat to the police officer, Noble added.

“This was in no way intentional,” Noble told the Post-Dispatch. “If she were here right now, she would tell you she never meant to shoot her and that she was never in fear for her life. This was an accident, a very tragic accident.”

Hall in the meantime was recovering from five surgical procedures and was “fighting for her life,” her father, Robert Hall Sr., told the news organization.

Hall’s parents said their primary focus right now is for their daughter to get well.

“I’m not angry,” Karen Carter, Hall’s mother, told the Post-Dispatch. “I have to have mercy in my heart … and right now I need everyone to pray for my daughter.”

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