Police Officers Charged With Crimes: After Shooting Unarmed Teen, Florida Officer Charged With Manslaughter

A former Florida police officer, who resigned from his department a few weeks after shooting an unarmed male teenager, was arrested Thursday on attempted manslaughter charges and could face five years in state prison if convicted.

Nicholas Galluzi shot a 17-year-old boy in December who was attempting to surrender after a car crash. Galluzi was a corporal for the police department in Rockledge, a town with a population of 25,000 located 50 miles southwest of Orlando.

The shooting was caught on Galluzi's body camera. In the minutes before the incident, Galluzi had been following two teens accused of breaking into cars. After the teens crashed the vehicle they were driving, one of the teens fled the scene. The other teen surrendered to Galluzi, who eventually shot the male suspect in the shoulder. According to the affidavit, investigators found the teen had complied with all of Galluzi's demands.

“A frame-by-frame review of the body camera footage showed that at the time of the shooting, (the teen) was lying on his stomach with his arms spread out and extended above his head, as he had been instructed to do,” court records said, according to the Orlando Sentinel.

"Why did you shoot me?" the teen can be heard asking Galluzi on the body camera footage.

"You kept moving your hands," Galluzi replied, before assuring the teen that he would get him medical help.

The teen suspect recovered from his injury and was eventually charged with three felony counts of vehicle burglary and one felony count of grand theft. He was sentenced to home detention.

Galluzi is the second Florida police officer to be charged for shooting a civilian in little more than a week. On Feb 22., police officer Lee Coel was charged with manslaughter for an incident last year in which he fatally shot a 73-year-old volunteer during a public demonstration. Coel accidentally used live ammunition during the exercise.