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(Reuters) – Weathered camera footage released by District of Columbia police on Thursday shows a white officer fatally shooting a young black man and then leaving the suspect for others to assist as he searches for the weapon he claims , threw the suspect.
The video, which captures the first deadly police shooting in Washington, DC since new body camera rules and other reforms went into effect in the District, was released a day after 18-year-old Deon Kay a who the police described as a known member of a street gang, was killed.
Wednesday’s shooting sparked protests and became another flash point in a summer of demonstrations for what activists denounce as an epidemic of excessive lethal force by police against African Americans.
Word spread through the southeastern neighborhood of the nation’s capital that Kay was unarmed and on the run when he was shot.
Releasing body camera video of the shooting officer Thursday, police said patrol officers had been searching for a man who was reportedly carrying a weapon and recognized the suspect from previous encounters as Kay.
When police approached a parked car with Kay inside, he and another suspect jumped out and fled on foot, pursued by officers, Police Chief Peter Newsham said at a news conference.
After chasing down a suspect and leaving him behind, the officer in question told investigators, he turned to see Kay approaching him brandishing a pistol. The officer fired the only shot that killed the suspect and saw Kay drop her gun, Newsham said.
The video shows Kay running towards the officer carrying what appears to be a gun in one hand as police are heard yelling, “Don’t move, don’t move.”
Hearing a gunshot, Kay collapses to the ground and screams as another police officer points down the hill, prompting the officer who shot to immediately run off in that direction.
Leaving other officers to tend to the dying suspect, the officer descends an embankment into a playground and grassy area, yelling, “Where is it? Where is it? … I’m looking for the gun … that. ” Minutes later the officer announces that he has found the weapon.
Newsham said the gun eventually landed 98 feet (30 meters) from where Kay landed. She acknowledged to journalists that “it seems a long way to drop a weapon.” No object in the air is discernible in the chaotic video.
Newsham said police were quick to release the images to counter “a lot of misinformation” that could otherwise “cause unrest in our city.”
On Thursday, protesters gathered outside Mayor Muriel Bowser’s home asking her to fire the boss.
“I am a black person living in this city, and I am tired of seeing people like me get killed,” one woman, wearing a “Black Lives Matter” T-shirt, told WRC-TV at the protest.
The city’s new reform law says police, required since December 2016 to use body cameras on patrol cars, must make their video available to the victim’s family within five days of the shooting.
(Reported by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Edited by Bill Tarrant and Leslie Adler)
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