An upstate New York police officer was acquitted Wednesday of manslaughter in the killing of an unarmed man in downtown Buffalo after a high-speed chase.

The soldier, Anthony Nigro IV, was found not guilty of first- and second-degree manslaughter charges by Erie County Court Judge James Bargnesi after a trial.

New York Attorney General Letitia James charged Trooper Nigro last June in the fatal shooting of the man, James Huber, 38, of North East, Pa., in February 2022. Trooper Nigro, 40, of Eden, N.Y. , had faced up to 25 years in prison if convicted.

Charles W. Murphy, president of the New York State Troopers Police Benevolent Association, said in a statement that the union was pleased with the ruling.

“We commend the judge for his decision because it is clear that the charge did not apply to this case,” Mr. Murphy said, adding: “Trooper Nigro’s actions were consistent with his training and the law , and he was justified in his use of the power.”

Andrew Quinn, an attorney for Trooper Nigro, declined further comment.

A spokeswoman for Ms. James said in a statement that the office “remains committed to conducting thorough and transparent investigations into each case, following the facts and pursuing justice.”

“We extend our sincere condolences to Mr. Huber’s loved ones,” the spokeswoman added.

Nicole Frye, Mr. Huber’s sister, said in a brief telephone interview that the trial had been difficult and the verdict was difficult to accept.

“My brother didn’t deserve to die that way,” Ms. Frye said, adding of Trooper Nigro, “I just hope he knows he can do better.”

The events leading up to the fatal shooting began when troopers pursued Mr. Huber after seeing him driving too fast and erratically on Interstate 90 near Buffalo, Ms. James said last year in announcing the charges. State police said Mr. Huber was driving more than 100 miles per hour. This is reported by the Buffalo News.

Troopers abandoned the pursuit when Mr. Huber left the highway, Ms. James said. A short time later, she said, Mr. Huber stopped his car at an intersection in downtown Buffalo, and Trooper Nigro, then a veteran of the state police, also stopped.

At that moment, if shown in footage captured by Trooper Nigro’s body-worn camera and released by Ms. James’ office, the officer exited his vehicle and approached Mr. Huber’s.

The subsequent interaction lasted only about 10 seconds, the footage shows. Trooper Nigro walked up to Mr. Huber’s car, his right arm extended and his gun pointed at Mr. Huber. He ordered Mr. Huber to get out of the car.

Mr. Huber mumbled in response and didn’t move. The conversation between them continued until Mr. Huber turned and reached for the center console of the car.

The officer reached into the car, grabbed the hood of Mr. Huber’s sweatshirt with one hand and held his gun to the back of Mr. Huber’s head with the other. He again ordered Mr Huber out of the car before shooting twice and then appearing to fall.

Mr. Huber’s car appeared to be reversing, and a few seconds later the sound of the car crashing can be heard. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

An assistant attorney general who prosecuted the case said during his closing argument that Trooper Nigro’s actions were not reasonable and that he did not have to shoot Mr. Huber.

But Trooper Nigro testified that he feared for his life when he fired his weapon, The Associated Press reported.

“I felt like I was going to be sucked under the vehicle; this man was going to kill me,” he said.

The Attorney General’s Office of Special Investigation prosecuted Trooper Nigro under a 2015 executive order that gives him the authority to investigate any incident in which a police officer may have caused the death of a civilian.

The case against Trooper Nigro was the second brought by the office against a state trooper in recent years as a result of a highway death.

Trooper Christopher Baldner is awaiting trial on manslaughter and other charges in connection with the December 2020 death of an 11-year-old Brooklyn girl. He is accused of ramming her family’s minivan during a high-speed chase near Kingston, N.Y. which caused it to crash.

Trooper Baldner was originally charged with second-degree murder. A judge later dismissed the murder charge, and Ms. James’ office appealed to reinstate the killing.

Jairo Lerma and several of his relatives placed a wooden cross in the dry grass along a Texas highway where his parents, en route from Georgia to Mexico, were suddenly killed in a fiery crash with an oncoming car carrying migrants and fleeing was for a deputy sheriff. .

Shortly before the crash on November 8, his mother, Isabel, had texted to say that she and her husband, José Carlos, a retired carpet factory worker from Dalton, Georgia, would soon be at the border. Instead, they died near a bend in the road about 90 kilometers away, along with five migrants and the 21-year-old driver of the other car.

“I blame the police because they chased at a very high speed in a location that was really dangerous,” Mr Lerma said. “This could have been prevented.”

In recent years, police departments in the United States have reassessed when and how to pursue fleeing suspects and adopted policies to limit the number of dangerous high-speed chases.

But in Texas, state police and sheriff’s offices are notable exceptions, say police experts, who retain broad discretion to initiate pursuit when their officers see fit. The approach even differs from that of the state’s large city departments, such as Houston, where police have recently become active pursuits for minor offenses prohibited.

Chases across Texas have spiked starting in 2021, when Gov. Greg Abbott started a program known as Operation Lone Star and sent thousands of state troopers to patrol the area around the border.

The chases, which often erupt suddenly from traffic jams, have left dozens dead and dozens injured, including bystanders, roiling border communities from El Paso to Brownsville.

High-speed pursuits are part of Abbott’s aggressive approach to the surge in migrants arriving at the border, a strategy that has sparked clashes with the Biden administration. The federal government has investigated the actions of Texas police during Operation Lone Star, including their operations in areas where migrants drowned in the Rio Grande, although no broad action has been taken to curtail the program.

In Zavala County, where Mr.’s parents Lerma were murdered, residents have suffered a sharp increase in the number of chases. State police conducted at least 175 vehicle pursuits in Zavala County during the first two years of Operation Lone Star alone, according to department data. In the year before the border enforcement program, there were seven.

“It’s dangerous,” said Paul Rodriguez, who drives a roadside taco truck with his wife on U.S. Highway 57, where many chases have occurred. “It could just come straight to us, or to people buying food.”

The owner of a towing company that regularly does business transporting the wrecked vehicles used by fleeing migrant smugglers said he is advising his family not to drive on Highway 57. The mayor of Crystal City, the largest community in sparsely populated ranch Land County, said he avoids the road altogether after seeing the gnarled remains of chases.

“I have stopped using that highway,” Mayor Frank Moreno Jr. said. in an interview at city hall. “After all those years in the military, I don’t think something like that would happen to me.”

The state’s Department of Public Safety said 29 people were killed in troop pursuits in 2021 and 2022, the first two years of Operation Lone Star, about double the number in the previous two years. The figures do not include pursuits by other law enforcement agencies working with the state on Operation Lone Star, the department said.

a review of media reports by Human Rights Watch suggested that as of July 2023, more than 60 people had been killed in pursuits during Operation Lone Star. A report from the organization was expected on Monday.

The increase in deaths appeared to closely follow a rise in pursuits by state police. In counties along or near the border in South Texas, the number of pursuits has doubled from about 500 in 2019 to 1,100 in 2022. According to department data, there were about four times as many in those counties as in and around major cities like Dallas and Houston.

This year, the federal Customs and Border Protection Agency, whose agents have been involved in a number of deadly pursuits, has imposed new risk assessments and restrictions as part of its pursuit policy.

“It’s evolved quite dramatically,” said Travis Yates, a police trainer and retired major with the Tulsa Police Department. Thirty years ago, most departments pursued anyone who fled, he said. “You’re seeing a trend right now to give officers very strict parameters.”

Yet many departments continue to stick to the old approach of leaving this to the discretion of individual officers.

“State police are typically the biggest opponents of restricting pursuits,” said Geoffrey P. Alpert, a professor of criminology at the University of South Carolina who has long studied police pursuits. “Their job is traffic. That’s what they do. So if someone flees from them, it is an insult.”

He added that Texas State Police are “very aggressive” when it comes to pursuits.

Steven McCraw, the director of the Department of Public Safety, said in a telephone interview that the department relied on its troops to decide when to initiate a pursuit and when to call it off.

The department, he said, also uses a range of other tools to stop fleeing cars, including tracking helicopters overhead, placing “stop sticks” across the road or, if available, attaching a GPS tracker during a stop. (Such devices are mainly used in urban environments, a department official said.)

“I would say you can certainly mitigate the risks,” Mr. McCraw said. But by not pursuing it, he added, “you are only rewarding the Mexican cartels” in their smuggling efforts. He said he expected his troops to conduct the pursuit in a “judicious manner” and that they would be held accountable if they failed to exercise due caution.

“Frankly, I think this is a much better approach than capitulating to the cartels,” he said.

Mr. Abbott has credited Operation Lone Star with thousands of human smuggling arrests, often of U.S. citizens hired to expel migrants from border areas. A new law, which will come into force next year, increases the penalty for smuggling up to at least 10 years.

Many of the drivers are Texans recruited with the promise of quick money, said Sgt. Rogelio Lopez Jr., a deputy with the Zavala County Sheriff’s Office. “A lot of them are teenagers that we’re chasing,” he said in an interview during a recent predawn patrol.

The accident in which the parents of Mr. Lerma died is still under investigation. Chief Deputy Ricardo Rios said the policy of the Zavala County Sheriff’s Office was to rely on a deputy’s discretion, taking into account the location — whether in town or on the highway — and traffic on the road.

In September 2021, Gabriel Salazar, a 19-year-old from San Antonio with a significant following on social media, was killed along with three migrants in a crash while fleeing a traffic stop in Crystal City. A sheriff’s deputy used a tire deflation device before the crash. the department said.

Mr. Salazar was driving a white Chevrolet Camaro, which he had bought a few days earlier with his mother’s help, said his sister, Danna Salazar. “He was so excited when he got it,” she said. The family had tried to file a case against the police, whom they blamed for the crash, but were unable to find a lawyer to represent them, Ms. Salazar said. “He had a lot of goals,” she said of her brother. “He was trying to be a model.”

Zavala County, once an industrial producer of spinach, is not directly on the Rio Grande, but provides a connection between the border town of Eagle Pass and Interstate 35.

During his patrol, Sergeant Lopez pointed out places where migrants waited for a pickup along the highways: an abandoned house, now filled with discarded clothing and backpacks; a hiding place in the brush.

Behind the fences of a farm, an abandoned SUV that had been involved in an accident last year sat in a stand of mesquite trees, near roaring cattle.

“They went from the highway to here,” said Eddie Gomez, a ranch worker. He said migrants still regularly passed through the hunting ranch on foot, cutting the fence and occasionally allowing deer to escape.

According to residents, the number of chases seemed to decrease in recent months. Still, the fear of a sudden pursuit loomed large.

For the annual Spinach Festival in Crystal City — where a painted statue of Popeye from the 1930s stands prominently in front of City Hall — City Manager Felix Benavides said he had lined up police cars for protection in case a fleeing suspect crashed during the celebration.

“As city manager, that is my biggest concern,” Mr. Benavides said. “These are the problems we face in America.”

A state agent was charged Monday by the New York Attorney General’s office with killing an unarmed man in downtown Buffalo by shooting him after a high-speed chase on the freeway.

The trooper, Anthony Nigro IV, a 15-year veteran of the state police, was charged with first and second degree manslaughter in the death of James Huber, 38, on Feb. 12, 2022, the Attorney General, Letitia James, said in a press release.

Trooper Nigro, 39, pleaded not guilty during an arraignment in the Erie County Supreme Court, Ms. James said. Judge M. William Boller, denying prosecutors’ request to set bail at $250,000, released Trooper Nigro under his own authority. He faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted of first-degree manslaughter, Ms James said.

Charles W. Murphy, the president of the Police Benevolent Association of the New York State Troopers, said that Trooper Nigro should not have faced criminal charges and was “justified in his use of force” and that Mr. Huber’s had “dangerous actions” threatened the safety of innocent motorists on the Thruway and in the city of Buffalo.”

Andrew Quinn, a lawyer for Trooper Nigro, declined to comment further.

Mr Huber’s sister, Nicole Frye, said in a brief telephone interview that she and other members of his family were still processing the news that Trooper Nigro had been charged. She challenged the idea that the shooting was justified in any way.

“We are happy that someone is being held responsible for my brother’s death and hope that justice will be done,” said Ms. Frye.

A state police spokeswoman said the agency had cooperated with the attorney general’s office during the investigation and would continue to do so.

The events leading up to the fatal shooting began with New York State troopers chasing Mr. Huber after seeing him speeding and erratically on Interstate 90 near Buffalo, Ms. James said. State police said at the time that Mr. Huber was driving more than 100 miles per hour, That reports Buffalo News.

Troopers gave up the chase when Mr. Huber exited the highway, Ms. James said. A short time later, she said, Mr. Huber stopped his car at the intersection of Washington and East Eagle Streets in Buffalo and Trooper Nigro also stopped.

At that time, if shown in footage captured by Trooper Nigro’s body camera and released by the Attorney General’s office as part of its investigation, the trooper got out of his vehicle and approached the brown sedan in which Mr. Huber, of North East, Pennsylvania, was driving.

The interaction that followed only lasted about 10 seconds. (Other footage released by Mrs. James’ office shows the inside of Trooper Nigro’s car with him at the wheel during the chase.)

The body camera footage shows trooper Nigro walking towards Mr. Huber’s car, his right arm outstretched, pointing his gun at Mr. Huber. He orders Mr. Huber to get out of the car, using a vulgarity for emphasis. Mr. Huber responds by muttering something and doesn’t move.

“Out! Out!” Trooper Nigro continues, his gun still aimed at Mr. Huber.

“Go away,” Mr. Huber says.

“Out!” the trooper repeats.

“No,” says Mr. Huber. He turns away from trooper Nigro and reaches for the car’s center console with his right hand. “No.”

Continuing to insist that Mr. Huber “get out”, the trooper reaches into the car, grabs the hood of Mr. Huber’s sweatshirt with one hand, and holds his gun to the back of Mr. Huber’s head with the other hand.

“Get the -,” he says again before shooting twice and then appearing to fall. Mr. Huber’s car appears to back up and a few seconds later a loud noise is heard – the sound of the car crashing and landing on its side.

Mr. Huber was pronounced dead at the scene. He was unarmed, Mrs. James said.

The Attorney General’s Office of Special Investigation is prosecuting the case under a 2015 executive order that gives it the authority to investigate any incident where a police officer may have caused the death of a civilian.

The case announced Monday against Trooper Nigro makes him the second member of the state police to face criminal charges in recent years as a result of a death from a highway chase.

Trooper Christopher Baldner awaits trial on manslaughter and other charges in the December 2020 death of an 11-year-old Brooklyn girl. He is accused of ramging her family’s minivan during a high-speed chase near Kingston, NY, causing it to crash.

Trooper Baldner was originally charged with second-degree murder. A judge rejected the murder count in February, and Ms. James’ office has appealed to have it reinstated.