By Michael Kunzelman
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Two police officers were sentenced on Thursday to several years in prison for their roles in a deadly chase of a man on a moped and subsequent cover-up — a case that ignited protests in the nation’s capital.
Metropolitan Police Department officer Terence Sutton, 40, was sentenced to five years and six months behind bars for a murder conviction in the October 2020 death of 20-year-old Karon Hylton-Brown. Andrew Zabavsky, a former MPD lieutenant who supervised Sutton, was sentenced to four years of incarceration for conspiring with Sutton to hide the reckless pursuit.
U.S. District Judge Paul Friedman handed down both prison sentences following a three-day hearing. The judge allowed both officers to remain free pending their appeals, according to a Justice Department spokesperson.
Matthew Graves, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said in a statement after the verdict that “public safety requires public trust.”
“Crimes like this erode that trust and are a disservice to the community and the thousands of officers who work incredibly hard, within the bounds of the Constitution, to keep us safe,” Graves said.
In a prepared statement to the court, Sutton said he had known Hylton-Brown for years and would see him nearly every day.
“Never in my wildest nightmare would I have thought this incident would end like this,” he wrote. “As a police officer, my intentions have always been pure and genuine — to serve and protect the people who live and work in the community.”
In December 2022, after a nine-week trial, a jury found Sutton guilty of second-degree murder and convicted both officers of conspiracy and obstruction of justice charges.
On the night of Oct. 23, 2020, Sutton drove an undercover police car to chase Hylton-Brown, who was riding an electric moped on a sidewalk without a helmet. Three other officers were passengers in Sutton’s car. Zabavsky was riding in a marked police vehicle.
The chase lasted nearly three minutes and spanned 10 city blocks, running through stop signs and going the wrong way up a one-way street. Sutton turned off his vehicle’s emergency lights and sirens and accelerated just before an oncoming car struck Hylton-Brown, tossing his body into the air. He never regained consciousness before he died.
The driver whose car struck Hylton-Brown testified that he would have slowed down or pulled over if he had seen police lights or heard a siren. Prolonging the chase ignored risks to public safety and violated the police department’s training and policy for pursuits, according to prosecutors.
“Hylton-Brown was not a fleeing felon, and trial evidence established the officers had no reason to believe that he was,” prosecutors wrote. “There was also no evidence that he presented any immediate risk of harm to anyone else or that he had a weapon.”
Prosecutors say Sutton and Zabavsky immediately embarked on a cover-up: They waved off an eyewitness to the crash without interviewing that person. They allowed the driver whose car struck Hylton-Brown to leave the scene within 20 minutes. Sutton drove over crash debris instead of preserving evidence. They misled a commanding officer about the severity of the crash. Sutton later drafted a false police report on the incident.
“A police officer covering up the circumstances of an on-duty death he caused is a grave offense and a shocking breach of public trust,” prosecutors wrote.