BOSTON (Court TV) — A Boston police officer appeared in court on Thursday, where he pleaded not guilty to charges that he unlawfully killed a carjacking suspect while responding to a call.
Police officer Nicholas O’Malley appears in court on June 4, 2026. (Court TV)
Prosecutors say officer Nicholas O’Malley, 34, was called to investigate a carjacking in March; when he and another officer located the stolen vehicle, they approached the car and asked the person inside to shut off the engine and show his hands. While prosecutors say that driver, Stephenson King Jr., did show his hands, they admit he refused to unlock the car and backed it into the now-unoccupied police cruiser belonging to O’Malley.
“As King was executing essentially a three-point turn to drive away, O’Malley fired three shots into the driver’s window and door,” Assistant State Attorney Ian Polumbaum said at Thursday’s hearing. All three shots hit the victim, “and at least one caused his death,” Polumbaum said. “Mr. O’Malley was not acting in reasonable defense of either himself, the other officer or the general public,” he said, calling the shooting “excessive.”
O’Malley’s attorney, David Yannetti, who previously rose to fame representing Karen Read at both of her criminal trials, criticized the way Polumbaum characterized the incident. “We have a very different view of the evidence in this case,” Yannetti said on Thursday, describing the prosecutor’s version of events as “sanitized quite a bit.”
Yannetti delivered his own version of what happened, which he said began with a mother picking up her daughter in Roxbury, who was attacked by a “violent carjacker” who “entered the car, punched her in the face and ordered her out of her vehicle, stealing her car.” Yannetti conceded that King had shown his hands to officers when asked, but said the alleged victim “then hid them again and ignored lawful order after lawful order after lawful order until he made the decision to smash that stolen car from the mother into a police cruiser. And then he showed no care in the world about who he endangered or who he hurt as he was trying to escape a scene for the second time. He left Officer O’Malley no choice.”
While O’Malley told investigators he was concerned for the safety of a second officer at the scene, prosecutors say his claim was controverted by other evidence.
Prosecutors did not ask for any cash bail; O’Malley was released on his own recognizance but was required to surrender all firearms to the Boston Police Department and he is not allowed to have any contact with civilian witnesses.
O’Malley is due back in court on July 23 for a pretrial conference.
