The US police officer charged with murder after shooting an unarmed man in South Carolina had been previously accused of excessive force in a confrontation with another black man.
North Charleston Police spokesman Spencer Pryor said the department will take another look at its decision to absolve officer Michael Thomas Slager of any wrongdoing in a 2013 case involving his use of a taser against Mario Givens.
Slager has now been fired and is charged with the shooting death of Walter Lamer Scott following a traffic stop over a broken tail light.
The latest case of a white police officer killing an unarmed black man caused an uproar after a video recorded by a bystander showed Slager firing eight times as Scott ran away.
Givens told AP on Wednesday that he was awakened before dawn one morning in September 2013 by loud banging on the front door of his family's home.
On his front porch was Slager. Givens said he opened his door and asked the officer what he wanted.
"He said he wanted to come in, but didn't say why," said Givens, now 33.
Then, without warning, Slager pushed in the door, he said.
"'Come outside or I'll tase you,"' he recalled the officer saying. "I didn't want that to happen to me, so I raised my arms over my head, and when I did, he tased me in my stomach anyway."
He said the pain from the stun gun was so intense that he dropped to the floor and began calling for his mother, who was also in the home. At that point, he said another police officer came into the house and they dragged him outside and threw him to the ground. He was handcuffed and put in the back of a squad car.
Though initially accused of resisting the officers, Givens was later released without charge.
It turned out that the officers had gone to the family's home at the behest of his brother's ex-girlfriend, who earlier reported awakening in her house to find Matthew Givens in her bedroom, uninvited.
Givens filed a complaint the next day.
A brief report included in Slager's personnel file said a senior officer was assigned to investigate. After a couple weeks, the case was closed with a notation that Slager was "exonerated".
