Records obtained by The Associated Press on Tuesday show that when Crutcher was ordered to exit the vehicle for a pat-down search, he began making a movement to his right ankle before an officer managed to get control of Crutcher. Tulsa Police Chief Chuck Jordan called the video “very disturbing”.
Advertisement
U.S. Attorney Danny C. Williams said there will be a Department of Justice civil rights investigation into the shooting, separate from one conducted by local authorities.
If confirmed by police, the admission would eliminate one of the chief justifications for police using deadly force against Crutcher.
The Crutchers say Terence was a hard-working student at Tulsa Community College, a committed Christian and a devoted father to his four children: three girls, ages 15, 15 and 12, and Terence Jr., who is 4. “We knew he didn’t commit a crime”, Tiffany Crutcher said at Wednesday’s news conference.
In footage from the police helicopter, which circled in the sky above the auto, the pilot can be heard describing Crutcher as a “bad dude”. Somebody in there that either makes a mistake, that is bad, or that chokes. The rest of the statement: “That looks like a bad dude, too, he could be on something”.
Video of the shooting, which Trump cited, shows Crutcher walking toward his SUV. A female officer is following him.
Crutcher appears to place his hands on his vehicle when he falls to the ground, shocked with a stun gun by one officer and shot by Shelby. To applause, Trump added: “I don’t know what she was thinking but I am very, very troubled by that”.
The officers slowly back away.
There’s no close-up, unobscured view of Crutcher before Shelby fired the fatal shot.
But Crutcher was then tasered and shot.
Crump has represented the family of Trayvon Martin, who was shot and killed by neighborhood watch coordinator George Zimmerman in 2012, and Michael Brown, the man fatally shot by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014.
But by Wednesday morning, Trump was tweeting well wishes to the communities of Tulsa and Charlotte, where police on Tuesday night shot an African-American man named Keith Lamont Scott.
“Maybe people like that, people that choke, people that do that maybe can not be doing what they are doing”, Trump said.
Since the shooting, Shelby has since been placed on paid administrative leave.
The initial moments of Crutcher’s encounter with police are not shown in the footage.
Mr Wood also said that Officer Shelby, thanks to training she had received, suspected Mr Crutcher was under the influence of PCP, a synthetic drug.
Tiffany said she and Crutcher had just celebrated their 40th birthdays on August 16.
After the shooting, Crutcher could be seen lying on the side of the road, blood pooling around his body, for almost two minutes before anyone checked on him.
Advertisement
Clinton said she would try to steer the national conversation by speaking “directly to white people” and saying, ‘”Look, this is not who we are”‘. Crutcher’s sister also wants prosecutors to charge the officer who shot her unarmed brother. He said Crutcher reached toward his pockets or into them several times against Shelby’s orders not to do so.
