Jayland Walker: Attorney says body camera video shows Black motorist shot over 60 times
Body camera footage to be released Sunday
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“Disturbing” police body camera video shows officers in Akron, Ohio, fire more than 90 shots towards the back of Jayland Walker, a 25-year-old Black motorist who fled a minor traffic stop on foot earlier this week. More than 60 of the bullets hit Mr Walker.
Attorney Bobby DiCello, who is representing Mr Walker’s family, viewed the footage ahead of its expected released Sunday afternoon by Akron authorities at a planned news conference.
“In my 22 years of doing trial work, both as a former prosecutor for Cuyahoga County and as a civil rights attorney on many serious cases of lethal use of force, I have never in my life seen anything like this, ever. It is very, very disturbing,” Mr DiCello told the Akron Beacon Journal. He added that Mr Walker appeared to suffer between 60 and 80 wounds.
The lawyer said the video was “unbelievable” and “brutal”, but called on community members to honour requests from Mr Walker to keep ongoing protests peaceful.
“We’re all bracing for the community’s response and the one message that we have is the family does not need any more violence,” he said. “... It needs peace, and it wants peace, and it wants the process to play out.”
Officer encountered Jayland Walker in the early hours of Monday morning, stopping him for a minor equipment violent.
When he encountered police, the 25-year-old took off on foot, the body camera footage shows, according to the attorney.
Akron police have said they saw a flash of gunfire, captured on a state transit camera, from Mr Walker’s car before he fled, though Mr DiCello said he has seen no evidence of this. He noted that all the windows in Mr Walker’s car were intact when it was found.
Community members have been protesting the shooting for days.
“When some people don’t follow directions, they wind up in handcuffs,” Hamza Khabir, of activist group Law Enforcement Equality Reform, told The New York Times. “When Black people do so, they wind up being shot and killed.”
The city canceled a planned 4 July celebration in light of the shooting.
“He was my skinny little nephew,” Mr Walker’s aunt Lajuana Walker Dawkins said at a news conference on Thursday. “And we miss him. We just want some answers.”
An unspecified number of Akron police officers have been placed on administrative leave after the shooting.
The Akron Police Department and the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation are probing the shooting, and will turn their findings over to the Ohio Attorney General’s Office.