A white police officer in the southern city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, has been acquitted of manslaughter in the fatal shooting of an unarmed African-American man, US news reports said yesterday.

Officer Betty Shelby was charged in September with killing Terence Crutcher, whose car had broken down on a Tulsa street.

A jury deliberated for nine hours before acquitting Shelby, according to a local television station, KFOR-TV.

Shelby said she shot 40-year-old Crutcher because she feared for her life, thinking he was reaching for a gun in his vehicle. Authorities later determined that Crutcher did not have a gun.