A white volunteer deputy sheriff in Oklahoma has been charged with manslaughter for the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man that was recorded on video.
Robert Bates, 72, thought he had drawn his Taser stun gun when he shot Eric Harris, 44, a suspect in an undercover gun-sale operation, on April 2, police said.
"He shot me! Oh, my God!" Harris is heard screaming in a video released over the weekend, in which deputies are seen pinning him to the footpath and a voice believed to be Bates' says: "I shot him. I'm sorry".
In a statement, the Tulsa District Attorney's Office said Bates, a Tulsa County reserve deputy since 2008, had been charged with second-degree manslaughter "involving culpable negligence".
Under Oklahoma law, culpable negligence is defined as "the lack of the usual ordinary care and caution" in the performance of one's duties, said Tulsa County District Attorney Stephen Kunzweiler.
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Conviction carries a prison term of two to four years.
Last week, a South Carolina police officer, Michael Slager, was charged with murder after a passer by caught him on video fatally shooting an African-American male, Walter Scott, after a routine traffic stop.
The mobile phone video, from April 4, shows Slager firing at Scott eight times in a vacant lot as Scott was running away.
Bates, an insurance broker in Tulsa who contributed to the Tulsa County sheriff's re-election campaign, has publicly acknowledged shooting Harris, a one-time convict who was tackled while fleeing an undercover gun sale sting operation.
The shooting was recorded by a deputy sheriff wearing sunglasses fitted with a tiny video camera - one of several types of body cameras being adopted by US law enforcement agencies following outcry over shootings.
