Video footage shows two Los Angeles police officers shooting an armed man to death as he appears to walk and then crawl away from them.
Saturday morning, Nicholas Robertson, 28, was reported to be walking the streets of Lynwood while firing shots into the air before police were called.
Officers say they found the father of three at a gas station around 11am and repeatedly asked him to drop his weapon. When he didn’t obey their orders, they opened fire.
Cell phone footage shot from a restaurant across the street shows officers firing approximately a dozen rounds at the suspect as he falls to the ground, and they continue shooting even as he attempts to crawl away.
A police spokesman originally said Robertson had aimed his weapon at the officers, but the footage shows he was actually walking away in the opposite direction.
Robertson later died at the scene, while officers recovered a loaded .45 caliber pistol.
Lieutenant Eddie Hernandez told KABC-TV the video is being looked at and asked anyone else with footage to come forward.
“The video is just one piece of evidence that’s going to be examined as part of a comprehensive, protracted, long investigation,” Hernandez explained. “And that’ll be analyzed against the physical evidence, the witness statements and the deputies’ statements.”
Not surprisingly, protesters gathered at the scene within hours of the shooting.
“They shot him. They shot him; as he crawled, they continued to shoot him,” Roberston’s in-law, Tracy Brown, 47, told the LA Times.
Nekeisha Robertson, the deceased’s wife, wept uncontrollably as Brown shouted to police: “He ain’t getting away with it!”
However, despite the video and the family’s outrage, Seth Stoughton, a criminal law professor at the University of South Carolina, says this case isn’t as open and shut as some may think.
“‘If the deputies reasonably believe the suspect with a firearm presents a danger by walking toward a gas station with vehicles and bystanders, they would be justified in using deadly force,” said Stoughton. “It does not strike me as egregious like [the] Walter Scott video here in South Carolina. If the suspect wasn’t armed or they didn’t have a solid basis for that belief, that would more problematic.”