By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. investigators opened a civil rights probe into final month’s deadly capturing of a Black teenager by a U.S. Park Police officer in Washington, they mentioned on Wednesday, a day after physique digital camera footage prompted the sufferer’s household to name for the shooter to be prosecuted and fired.
Dalaneo Martin, 17, was shot after officers from the Park Police and D.C. Metro Police responded to a report of a stolen car on March 18. A youth, later recognized as Martin, was asleep within the driver’s seat of the parked car when officers arrived, police mentioned.
Bodycam footage, launched by police on Tuesday, confirmed officers approaching the automotive to tug the driving force out. One of many Park Law enforcement officials jumped into the again seat and yelled, “Police, do not transfer. Do not transfer. Do not transfer.” The motive force then took off with the officer within the again seat.
“Cease man, simply let me out. Let me go,” the officer is heard saying. “Cease. Cease or I will shoot.” Gunshots are heard hardly a second later.
Police mentioned the driving force died on the scene and a gun was recovered contained in the car. The automotive crashed into a close-by home and the officer jumped out of it, the footage confirmed.
The officers’ faces have been blurred within the video and none of them have been recognized by police.
“The lack of a life is at all times tragic however is very heartbreaking when it entails a toddler,” the U.S. Lawyer’s Workplace in Washington mentioned in a press release asserting the federal investigation. It described the bodycam footage as “extraordinarily upsetting.”
The D.C. Metropolitan Police directed inquiries to the Park Police, which couldn’t be reached instantly for remark.
In one other violent confrontation captured on body-cam video, Memphis law enforcement officials on Jan. 7 pummeled a Black motorist, Tyre Nichols, with kicks, punches and baton blows after a visitors cease. Nichols later died from accidents sustained within the beating.
That assault reinvigorated the nationwide soul-searching about police brutality and race that accelerated after the killing of George Floyd three years in the past. Floyd, a Black man, died after a white Minneapolis police officer pinned his neck to the bottom with a knee for greater than eight minutes.
Jade Mathis, an lawyer for the Martin household, informed the Washington Submit that their preliminary response to the footage was tears that rapidly turned to anger.
“However it was additionally aid as a result of they’ve extra solutions than they’d earlier than,” the newspaper quoted Mathis as saying.
The lawyer mentioned the household desires the officer who shot Martin to be recognized, prosecuted and terminated.
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