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THREE US policemen have been charged with the killing of an eight-year-old girl in Philadelphia, who was shot dead in August 2021.
Devon Smith, Sean Patrick Dolan, and Brian James Devaney fired 25 bullets into a car which struck four passengers including Fanta Bility, who died in her mother’s arms.
They face charges of voluntary manslaughter, involuntary manslaughter and reckless endangerment.
Murder charges were initially brought against two teenagers for initiating the events after police said they fired at each other moments before the shooting.
The officers maintain their innocence and said they were responding to gunfire, believing that armed suspects were in the car.
But Delaware County District Attorney Jack Stollsteimer said authorities were “now sure beyond reasonable doubt that the officers not only shot but killed Fanta Bility” and wounded three others.
“They returned fire at the wrong target, in the wrong direction, and into a group of people. That is what they are being held accountable for,” he said.
A lawyer for the Bility family said that Fanta “was a bright, bright, shining light, the kind of person that made people happy just by looking at her. And to have her gone is just a terrible, terrible tragedy.”