More than two and half years after killing 24-year-old Ryan Twyman, Andrew Lyons, a former L.A. County Sheriff’s Deputy (LASD) was charged with manslaughter last week.
Video surveillance footage of the shooting shows Ryan and a friend sitting in a parked car at an apartment complex in Willowbrook when two deputies, Andrew Lyons and Christopher Muse, roll up on them. After Muse opens the passenger side of the vehicle, Twyman throws the car in reverse, at which point the deputies open fire, as the car slowly moves in reverse. Lyons then retrieves a semi-automatic assault rifle from his patrol car before opening fire on the vehicle, after it comes to a stop. In total more than 30 bullets were fired at the vehicle, miraculously the passenger was not hit.
LASD policy generally prohibits deputies from firing at moving vehicles unless someone in the vehicle is ““imminently threatening a department member or another person present with deadly force by means other than the moving vehicle.”
In a statement released last week, the district attorney’s office said “Lyons is accused of retrieving his semiautomatic assault rifle and shooting into the vehicle after it stopped moving. Christopher Muse, the other deputy that shot at Ryan and his passenger, was not charged.
In addition to one count of voluntary manslaughter, Lyons is also facing two counts of assault with a semi-automatic weapon.