The shooting comes just four months after former Tulsa County volunteer deputy Robert Bates was sentenced to four years in prison on a second-degree manslaughter conviction in the 2015 death of an unarmed black man. Shelby worked as a Tulsa County sheriff’s deputy for four years before joining the Tulsa Police Department in December 2011, officials said.
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Crutcher’s family said his SUV stalled in the middle of the road on Friday as he was heading home from class at a local community college. Investigators are reviewing footage from two dashcams and a police helicopter camera.
However, both videos begin with Crutcher walking towards his vehicle with his hands in the air as cops train their guns on him, so it appears that he was following their orders after committing the faux pas of walking up to them without permission.
The footage is scheduled to be released to the public on Monday afternoon.
But footage of the incident shows Crutcher walking away from officers toward his vehicle.
“Shots fired!” a female voice can be heard yelling.
He died that night at an area hospital.
Moments after that conversation in the police helicopter, Shelby fires one shot with her gun as an officer next to her fires a Taser.
Rodney Goss, a pastor at the Morning Star Baptist Church in north Tulsa, saw the videos along with other local community leaders and the family of the victim, Terence Crutcher. “Might be on something”.
Almost a dozen protesters gathered outside the Tulsa County courthouse following the news conference, calling for justice in the case.
“I have his text message, and it said: I’m going to show you”. Officers appear to wait more than a minute before approaching Crutcher while he bleeds in the street.
The only way I don’t see this being a justified shooting is if Officer Shelby’s shot was a negligent discharge.
“I’m going to tell you right now, there was no gun on the suspect or in the suspect’s vehicle”, the police chief said.
But they did not release the dash cam video from Shelby’s auto, which would show us exactly what took place between them two to make her so terrified that she had to kill him.
Police Chief Chuck Jordan has asked the U.S. Department of Justice to help investigate the shooting, contacting the department through the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Tulsa, according to an earlier news release.
Tulsa police say Crutcher was shot after his SUV stalled on a city street. Such incidents have spurred the national Black Lives Matter movement, which grew from a spate of state-sanctioned and extrajudicial killings throughout the country.
“Officers have discretion whether or not to turn their light bar on”, she said. He said that “we will achieve justice” and that “covering up” is not in his or his staff’s DNA.
As Terence’s family and community plead for peaceful protests and level heads, today’s promise of an independent federal investigation perhaps will bring some hope for peaceful resolution to a community that has been brutally betrayed by the people sworn to protect it. Both have been placed on paid administrative leave.
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The reaction on Twitter has been understandably robust given the nation’s climate around police shootings and Black victims.
