Joe McKnight's shooter, Ronald Gasser, released from custody

[Yo_Mama]

22. Except the witness account is utterly discredited by forensic physical evidence.

Utterly = completely, entirely, absolutely. The witness account has no relation to the actual shooting. They cannot arrest or charge on the basis of that witness' statement.

http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2016/12/ronald_gasser_joe_mcknight_sho.html

"The wounds are not consistent with being shot from above while on the ground," Jefferson Parish Coroner Dr. Gerry Cvitanovich said, as he discussed McKnight's autopsy during a press conference Friday (Dec. 2).
...
Cvitanovich said one of the three bullets that struck McKnight, 28, entered his chest and traveled through his liver and kidney before exiting out his right lower back. Another bullet struck McKnight in his right shoulder and punctured his lung. The third bullet hit McKnight in his left hand, the coroner said.

Normand said three shell casings were found inside Gasser's vehicle. Gasser, 54, was sitting in the driver's seat of his blue Infiniti coupe when he fired three times at McKnight. The former NFL player was out of his Audi Q7 and "positioned at the passenger window of the Infiniti," authorities said.

Between the autopsy and the position of the shell casings (not to mention blood, etc), the witness is lying or more likely did not even see what occurred, or perhaps was intoxicated and confused that late at night.

They need probable cause to charge, and if you arrest when the evidence does not support it, the police can be charged with false arrest.

On the other hand, most people in a vehicle will drive off when threatened, so this is still a suspicious shooting. I would assume that the cops got the shooter to make definite statements that can be checked against physical evidence (and if contradicted, can help make the case against the shooter). The call they are putting out for witnesses is because the witness account you are referring to is worse than useless.

I posted the stuff about the wounds because they mean something rather definite. If the shooter was in his vehicle (shell casings), then in order for those trajectories to be possible, the deceased was leaning into the car window (upper body strongly inclined down to the window, and the left hand must have been either up or in the car, or perhaps was hit last if the deceased reeled back from the car.

And that changes the picture, because that seems more threatening. It might not be a threat if the deceased were just leaning into the window talking to the shooter, but whatever happened, this was not a friendly encounter.

The only other way to get wound trajectories like that would be an almost downward shot, as if the shooter were standing on top of the car and shot downward into the deceased's body, but that isn't possible because of the shell casings.

They can also get gunpowder residue from the body and from the car to confirm how the shooting occurred. They will be able to get fingerprints etc from the passenger side. So there should be rather a lot of physical evidence in this case that would show a lot about what happened.