Days after a former Fairfax County police officer was sentenced for killing a man in Tysons, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin stepped in to commute his sentence.

Former Fairfax County police officer Wesley Shifflett, 36, will not have to serve three years in prison that a judge sentenced him to on Friday in relation to the killing of a suspected shoplifter outside of Tysons Corner Center in February 2023.

Youngkin said Sunday that he commuted Shifflett’s “unjust” sentencing, saying that it violates “the cornerstone of our justice system” and how it’s in the interest of justice that he be released immediately.

“In this case, the court rejected the Senior Probation and Parole Officer’s recommendation of no incarceration nor supervised probation and instead imposed a sentence of five years’ incarceration with two suspended and an additional five years of probation,” Youngkin said in a release.

“Sgt. Shifflett has no prior criminal record, and was, by all accounts, an exemplary police officer.”

Shifflett had been convicted by a jury in October 2024 for recklessly handling a firearm but was not found guilty of involuntary manslaughter.

The two charges were filed against Shifflett after a special grand jury returned the charges in October 2023. An initial effort for a grand jury indictment was declined in April 2023.

According to a police account of the shooting, an officer saw Timothy Johnson, 37, exit Nordstrom after taking a pair of sunglasses and head toward the parking garage.

Officers said that after Johnson failed to comply with orders to get on the ground, Shifflett fired his weapon at Johnson, striking him in the chest. He died at a hospital.

At trial, Shifflett claimed self-defense , testifying he believed Johnson possessed a firearm. The former police officer said he grew concerned about a weapon after noticing that Johnson was reaching for his waistband after falling to the ground during a brief chase on foot through a wooded area.

“At that moment, that was the most scared I had been in my life because I thought at any moment he would pull out a gun and just start shooting me,” Shifflett said during trial. “I didn’t have the luxury to wait and see a gun because I knew in an instant I could be dead.”

Bodycam footage showed to the jury during the trial proved inconclusive. Asked why he discharged his weapon before telling Johnson to “stop reaching” toward his waistband, Shifflett said his “motor functions were operating more quickly than I could verbalize.”

Johnson’s mother, Veronica, earlier reflected on the Friday sentencing as a “David and Goliath moment.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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