The first Metro police officer to see jail time for fatally shooting someone while on duty is now out of custody. Andrew Delke was released Thursday after serving 18 months for killing 25-year-old Daniel Hambrick. During a 2018 foot chase, Delke, who is white, shot Hambrick, who was Black, in the back.
Delke was supposed to stand trial for the shooting last summer. The night before the trial, he accepted a plea deal for a minimum sentence of three years in jail.
More: What happened inside the courtroom and out as Nashville officer took a plea deal
However, Delke will no longer serve that time because of jail rules. The Davidson County Sheriff’s Office allows inmates without infractions to take time off their sentence.
Hambrick’s mother, Vickie, has called Delke’s plea agreement “unfair, secretive and racist.” She says her family did not know about the deal on the first day of Delke’s would-be trial last summer. Before the judge accepted the plea agreement, Delke would have made history as the first MNPD officer to face trial on first-degree murder charges for an on-duty shooting. If he’d been convicted, he could’ve spent the rest of his life in prison.
Although Delke did get time off for good behavior, he had waived his right to parole earlier this year. At the time, Delke’s defense attorney, David Raybin, said the former officer agreed to forego parole as part of the plea agreement.
Hambrick’s mother, however, has said Delke’s sentence was unfair and her son, Daniel, would’ve gotten the maximum had the roles of the situation been reversed.
“Y’all would have thrown away the key on a Black man,” Vickie Hambrick said at the parole board meeting.
WPLN News took a closer look at Delke’s case in the podcast Deadly Force.
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