A nearly 30-year veteran of a small-town police department in South Carolina was charged Wednesday with gunning down an unarmed man who led her on a high-speed chase and then attempted to flee his crashed car, investigators said.
Cassandra Dollard, 52, of Hemingway, is charged with voluntary manslaughter in connection with the shooting that happened early Sunday, after she pursued the driver 8 miles outside the town’s limits.
Dollard attempted to pull over Robert Junior Langley for running a stop sign, but the encounter evolved into a chase in which Langley clocked speeds of over 100 mph, according to a State Law Enforcement Division arrest warrant.
Langley was shot in the chest after crashing his car in a ditch in remote Georgetown County, agents said. He was attempting to exit the passenger door when blasted in the chest.
According to the arrest warrant, Dollard told investigators she feared for her life but also stated that she did not see a weapon in Langley’s possession. State agents stated that no weapon was identified at the scene.
Dollard faces a sentence of 2 to 30 years in prison if convicted.
Prior to Sunday’s fatal shooting, Officer Dollard was fired from two separate law enforcement jobs for “negligence” and “poor performance,” according state records obtained by ABC News reveal.
After eight years on the job, she was terminated from the Johnsonville Police Department in 2002 for “poor performance.”
Dollard left another police department after four years to work for the State Transport Police, a division of the South Carolina Department of Public Safety. After eight years, she was terminated in 2014 for a variety of offenses, including “negligence in the performance of duty,” “willful violation of rules,” and “improper conduct.”
