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Former Officer Kerrick's trial case expunged 9 months after end of trial

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Eyewitness News has learned that nine months after a jury deadlocked in his manslaughter trial, former
CMPD Officer Randall "Wes" Kerrick's case has been expunged.

Kerrick was charged with killing Jonathan Ferrell, who was unarmed, when Ferrell ran toward him and refused to orders to stop in northeast Charlotte in September 2013.

Last year, a jury deadlocked 8-4, with eight jurors wanting to find Kerrick not guilty of manslaughter.  The Attorney General’s Office prosecuted the case and announced that they would not retry it.

The expungement means that all police, jail and court records in the case have been erased.

“It's just one more step in him moving forward with his life,” said Attorney Mike Greene, who represented Kerrick in the case.

Eyewitness News checked and found that Kerrick’s manslaughter case no longer shows up in the court’s computer system and his mugshot and arrest records are no longer on the Mecklenburg County Jail’s website.

“After the expungement is done, he can legally say that he was never even charged with a crime,” Greene said.

But an expungement cannot erase everything. A Google search of Kerrick’s name returned more than 245,000 results in less than a second, and Greene said he can never leave it all behind.

“You can't go through that kind of a process as a 27-year-old young man and have it not affect you.  But he's doing as well as could be expected,” Greene said.

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