Three Aprils ago, rain fell gently on the windshield of officer Christopher Schurr’s police cruiser. It was a quiet Monday morning, local schools were out for spring break. Schurr drove slowly down a residential street on the southeast side of Grand Rapids just after 8 a.m. when a grey Nissan passed him from the opposite direction.
It would have been difficult for Schurr to see the vehicle’s license plate before he wheeled around to follow the vehicle. But he later would say the plate was the reason he pulled over the car with two Black men inside.
As soon as the vehicles stopped, one of those men, Patrick Lyoya, stepped out of the sedan and faced Schurr, ignoring Schurr’s shouts to stay in the car.
“What I do wrong?” Lyoya asked, appearing confused.
Lyoya was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and spent much of his childhood in a refugee camp before his family resettled in Michigan.
“The plate doesn’t belong on this car,” Schurr tells him.
Videos of this scene and what followed were so disturbing, the city of Grand Rapids erected barricades around downtown before releasing them to the public. Anticipating protests, officials closed some government buildings downtown, letting staff leave early.
The scene ends with Schurr on top of Lyoya, firing a single shot into the back of Lyoya’s head.
That June, nine weeks after the shooting, Kent County prosecutor Christopher Becker charged Schurr with second-degree murder.
Three Aprils later, after three years of failed appeals at every level of court in Michigan, Christopher Schurr will face a jury for the first time.
A separate legal case, a $100 million civil lawsuit filed by Lyoya’s family against the city of Grand Rapids and Schurr, is also still pending. Attorneys managed to get the city dropped from the lawsuit, meaning the ultimate financial award, if it ever comes, will likely be far less than what Lyoya’s family initially sought.
Peter Lyoya, Patrick’s father, told Michigan Public’s Stateside he didn’t understand why both cases were taking so long. Peter spoke in Swahili, and was translated by his son Thomas Lyoya, one of Patrick’s younger brothers.
“We've been waiting for three long years now, and we just, we don't want to wait anymore,” Thomas Lyoya translated. “We want justice for Patrick, and hopefully as soon as it can happen.”
Justice delayed
Kent County prosecutor Christopher Becker made the decision to charge Schurr in June of 2022, after reviewing the findings of a Michigan State Police investigation. Becker, who regularly works with Grand Rapids police in pursuing criminal prosecutions, and who had received campaign donations from the Grand Rapids Police Officers Association, insisted he wasn’t trying to make a statement in bringing the charges.
“I think this is not a message,” Becker said. “This is just based on the facts and making a decision on this case.”
Second-degree murder was the highest charge Becker said he could bring against Schurr. It carries with it a maximum sentence of life in prison, with the possibility of parole. The only higher murder charge — first-degree murder — requires premeditation, and Becker said there wasn’t enough evidence to support that.
To prove Schurr guilty of second-degree murder, Becker will have to show there was no justification for the killing — that Schurr was not acting in self defense.
At the preliminary hearing in October 2022, Becker argued a shot to the back of Lyoya’s head could not be self-defense.
“He’s down on the ground,” Becker said to 61st District Court Judge Nicholas Ayoub. “His face is down on the ground.”
But Schurr’s attorney, Matthew Borgula, argued Lyoya was beginning to turn his head at the moment Schurr fired. Borgula said video showed Lyoya had control of Schurr’s taser — a claim that prosecutors dispute. Schurr discharged his taser twice, missing both times. At that point the taser was only capable of being used again in “drive stun” mode. That mode is not designed to incapacitate a person, but can still cause serious pain, an expert from the taser manufacturing company testified.
While Borgula argued there was evidence that Schurr acted in self-defense, there was another reason he said the murder charge against Schurr should be thrown out.
Michigan law, he said, gives police officers the authority to shoot any suspect who had committed a felony and tried to flee.
“I think the state of Michigan has one of the least restrictive laws anywhere in the country,” for police using deadly force, Borgula said to Ayoub. “And I cannot find a single case where an officer has been charged in Michigan with murder.”
In fact, Borgula said, Michigan has no laws at all governing when police can use deadly force against a suspect. That means the law that applied in Schurr’s situation was not a written law, but common law, which is based on prior case rulings.
“Under common law, when met with force, making a lawful arrest, you can use deadly force,” Borgula said. “Now, should that be the law? No, but that's a question for the Legislature, not this court.”
So, Borgula concluded, Ayoub should throw the murder charges out, right then and there.
Ayoub did not throw the case out. He wanted a jury to decide whether Schurr’s actions were justified.
In his ruling, Ayoub said in order for the killing to be justified, it must have been reasonably necessary in the moment. And he was not in a position to decide if it was.
“The reasonableness of those actions can hardly be fully and fairly judged by one person in a black robe with 20/20 vision of hindsight and from the comfortable and safe vantage point of the high perch of the armor plated judge’s bench,” Ayoub said. “It is precisely though for this reason that questions of reasonableness and all questions of fact are determined by a jury after a full and fair trial.”
This finding by Ayoub — that the case presented enough evidence to warrant a jury trial — was just the beginning of the legal process. But this step is where the case has been stuck for the past two and a half years, as Schurr’s attorneys have tried again and again to get Ayoub’s ruling overturned.
Judges have agreed that Michigan has no formal law on when police can use deadly force, but they’ve disagreed at every stage over what the common law says. Police officers can’t simply shoot and kill any felon suspect who tries to run away.
17th Circuit Court Judge Christina Mims said it in February of 2023.
“That would require in effect two different definitions of murder. One for police officers and one for the rest of us, and such a scheme could raise a significant constitutional question,” Mims said of the defense’s arguments.
Schurr’s attorneys appealed her ruling.
A panel of judges from the Michigan Court of Appeals heard arguments later that year, and sided with Mims and Ayoub.
Schurr’s attorneys appealed that ruling.
In late 2024, the Michigan Supreme Court decided not to hear arguments in the case. That finally ended the appeals, and confirmed that Michigan law does not allow police officers to shoot any felon who flees.
By then, it had been more than two and a half years since Schurr killed Lyoya.
“It’s taking this long due to the appeals,” prosecutor Christopher Becker wrote to Michigan Public in an email in December. “We can’t do anything in our court while case is in higher appeals courts.”
Once the state Supreme Court decided not to take up the case, the lower courts were finally free to move forward and schedule the trial. Jury selection begins this week. The trial begins next week, on April 28.
Beyond a reasonable doubt
To prove a person guilty of second-degree murder in Michigan, a prosecutor has to prove three things:
- The defendant killed someone.
- They did the killing on purpose, or “knowingly created a very high risk of death or great bodily harm knowing that death or such harm would be the likely result of [his / her] actions.”
- There was no justification for the killing or “circumstances that reduce it to a lesser crime.”
In Christopher Schurr’s murder trial, there will be no dispute about the first two elements. There is no doubt or disagreement that Schurr fired a bullet into the back of Patrick Lyoya’s head on purpose.
The entire case rests on the third element: Was there justification?
After failing to convince the courts that police officers have the right to use deadly force against any fleeing felon, jurors will have to decide Schurr’s guilt or innocence similarly to how they would anyone else on the street who fired their weapon. The question will be: was Schurr acting in self-defense? Michigan’s model jury instructions tell jurors that, for self-defense to be a justification for murder, the defendant must have “honestly and reasonably” believed they were at risk of being killed or seriously injured at the time, and that killing the other person was “immediately necessary” to protect themselves.
Prosecutors have argued Schurr could not have reasonably felt that he was in danger when he was on top of Patrick Lyoya, shoving his head into the ground.
Schurr’s attorneys point out he had been struggling with Lyoya before he drew his taser.
“The officer showed incredible restraint,” Borgula said in arguments in front of the Court of Appeals in 2023. “A minute and a half fighting with another person is an incredibly long time, incredibly exhausting.”
After a minute and a half trying to wrestle Lyoya into submission, Schurr drew his taser and — without verbal warning — fired it twice, missing Lyoya both times. Lyoya grabbed at the taser. Whether he had control of it is disputed.
But the taser will likely be a key point at trial. What level of control did Lyoya have over the taser when Schurr reached for his gun? Was Lyoya attempting to harm Schurr with the taser, or simply avoiding being stunned by it? And what reasonably could Schurr have believed were the risks in the moment he was on top of Lyoya firing a gun into the back of his head?
At the preliminary hearing, attorneys called an expert witness who works for the company that manufactures the taser, to talk about its capabilities. One key point is that the taser had already been deployed twice, and both charges had been used up.
The only option left would have been to use the taser in a mode called drive-stun.
Jurors will hear the arguments over the taser and its capabilities, and they will likely hear from experts on police training. They will have to decide if Schurr had a reasonable fear in the moment he fired his weapon that he was in immediate danger of being seriously hurt or killed.
That is the key question of the case. If 12 jurors can agree on an answer, they will have a verdict.
Separate, civil case still playing out
All of this will play out while a separate case over the shooting is still in limbo. Patrick Lyoya’s family filed a $100 million lawsuit in civil court in December 2022.
The lawsuit accused both Schurr and the city of Grand Rapids of violating Patrick Lyoya’s rights and of unlawfully killing him.
“Schurr’s actions demonstrated a reckless disregard of his legal duties as well as a substantial lack of concern for whether death or injury would result from his actions,” the initial complaint argued.
A federal judge dropped the city as a defendant in that lawsuit, and Schurr’s attorneys have been trying to get him dropped as well. U.S. Supreme Court justices had a conference scheduled last week to consider whether to hear his appeal in the civil case. A decision on whether they will take it up could come as soon as Monday. (Update: Supreme Court justices denied the request to hear the case)
“We want justice for Patrick, and hopefully as soon as it can happen.”
Patrick Lyoya’s father can’t fathom why this has taken so long. The many twists and turns of two separate legal cases have been confusing to follow even for those accustomed to the U.S. judicial system.
But for Peter Lyoya, who was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and has to speak to reporters through a Swahili interpreter, the path to justice has been exhausting.
“It feels like, almost like they're picking on him, like he's not nobody important or something,” said Thomas Lyoya, Patrick’s younger brother, translating for their father Peter on Stateside. “That's why they're taking too long.”
Lyoya described the family’s journey to the U.S. after living in a refugee camp in Malawi, where Patrick grew up. Patrick graduated from high school in Lansing, but moved to Grand Rapids to find work.
“And the main reason that Patrick went to Grand Rapids was to help with a lot of stuff because he was the oldest one, especially financially,” said Peter Lyoya. “And as the years go by, especially this 2025, things have been getting more and more difficult with him not being here.”
Even after he moved, Patrick would come to Lansing on weekends to visit the family. Without him, it’s been difficult to keep up on the bills. They were forced to move. The home that Patrick visited is no longer their home.
On April 28, when the murder trial for Christopher Schurr begins, Peter Lyoya will be making the drive to Grand Rapids to be there.
An earlier version of this story said jury selection in Christopher Schurr's criminal trial would begin on Monday. While potential jurors report on Monday, the process of voir dire - in which jurors are questioned before being added to the jury - begins on Tuesday.
