Bijan Ghaisar Fatal Shooting Investigation Won't Be Reopened By DOJ

FORT HUNT, VA — The U.S. Department of Justice announced Friday it will decline to reopen the federal investigation into the fatal shooting of Bijan Ghaisar by U.S. Park Police.

Ghaisar, an accountant from McLean, was fatally shot in November 2017 during a pursuit by U.S. Park Police down the George Washington Memorial Parkway. Ghaisar had left the scene of a crash in which his vehicle was rear-ended on the parkway at Slaters Lane in Alexandria.

As shown on police cruiser video released by Fairfax County Police, the pursuit ended at Fort Hunt Road and Alexandria Avenue in Fort Hunt, where two Park Police officers fired multiple shots at him while he tried to drive away.

Ghaisar's family said he was unarmed. He died 10 days after the shooting from injuries relating to the gunshots to the head.

Since the fatal shooting of Ghaisar, family and friends of the McLean accountant have been calling for justice in his killing. In 2019, the U.S. Department of Justice announced it would not seek federal criminal civil rights charges against the officers, Alejandro Amaya and Lucas Vinyard. According to a statement from the department, "there was insufficient evidence to establish a willful violation of the applicable federal criminal civil rights statute."

After a change in leadership from the Trump to Biden administration, Ghaisar's family urged the Department of Justice to reopen the investigation. But on Thursday, Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division told counsel for Ghaisar’s family that the federal investigation isn't being reopened.

"To prevail under the federal civil rights statute, the Justice Department must prove that an officer, acting under color of law, willfully used unreasonable force," the department said in a news release. "To establish willfulness, federal authorities must show that the officer acted with the deliberate and specific intent to do something the law forbids...Mistake, misperception, negligence or poor judgment are not sufficient to establish a federal criminal civil rights violation."

The Ghaisar family reacted in a statement, saying, "the Department’s decision is a betrayal to our family and to justice. There is frame-by-frame video showing Officers Amaya and Vinyard violently out of control before they gunned down Bijan at close range. This was not poor judgment or negligence, this was a willful, deadly escalation of excessive violence by two federal law enforcement officers who shot 10 times at Bijan."

Congressional representatives from DC and Northern Virginia also criticized the U.S. Department of Justice's announcement.

"Nearly five years after he was killed, Bijan’s family, friends, and community still are no closer to an understanding of how the events of that night could justify his being shot to death by police," said Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine (D-VA), Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), and Reps. Don Beyer, Jennifer Wexton and Gerry Connolly (D-VA) in a statement. "We are thinking of the Ghaisar family today, and will continue to stand with them in their pursuit of justice."

After the federal investigation was closed in 2019, prosecution by Fairfax County Commonwealth's Attorney Steve Descano led to involuntary manslaughter and reckless use of a firearm indictments against both officers. When prosecution was transferred to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, a federal judge dismissed the case in October 2021. The commonwealth's appeal in the case was later dropped by Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares.