The U.S Park Police released released body cam footage on Tuesday showing the moment one of their police officers shot and killed a teenager last month in Washington, D.C.
The incident reportedly occurred on the morning of March 18. An officer with the Metropolitan Police Department was responding to a call about a suspicious vehicle being parked. When authorities arrived to the scene, the officer found the car with the engine running and the driver — identified as 17-year-old D.C. resident Dalaneo Martin — apparently asleep inside. After determining the vehicle was stolen, the officer called for backup. Additional Metropolitan Police Department officers as well as two U.S. Park Police officers arrived on scene to assist, police said.
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Footage from the officers’ body cameras, released by the Metropolitan Police Department and the U.S. Park Police, show them attempting to remove Martin from the car and then the videos show an officer cutting plastic that was in place of the right backseat window and unlocking the door. The two U.S. Park Police officers then enter the vehicle from the backseat doors and grab Martin by his hands while shouting, “Police! Don’t move!”
Martin awakes and a brief struggle ensues, the video shows. Martin drives the car away with one of the U.S. Park Police officers inside while the other falls out onto the street, the videos show. Body camera footage from the officer still in the backseat shows Martin pulling his hands away and placing them on the steering wheel while continuing to drive. The officer shouts at him from the backseat to “stop” while Martin yells back, “Get off of me!”
With his gun drawn, the officer then shouts: “Stop! Stop or I’ll shoot!”
About a second later, the officer is seen in the video firing his weapon multiple times.
A Maryland-based law firm representing Martin’s family has called for a full investigation.
“They treated him as a criminal before there was any case, any trial, any testimony from him or anything, right? He can’t tell you what happened. He can’t tell you anything you probably would like to know that day because you killed him,” said Jade Mathis, the family’s attorney, in an interview with ABC News.
Mathis continued, “He was sleeping; It is not illegal or is not criminal to sleep in a vehicle,” Mathis said.
Martin’s mother, Terra, remembers her son as “fun, loving” and a great “father.”
“I want justice served appropriately for them all, but the officer that shot my son — executed him. I want him locked up. I want him away from his family. The thing is, they can visit you in jail, but I got to visit my son in the grave,” said Terra Martin in an interview.
She continued, “He had a lot to give. He’s a protector. He protect anybody, he don’t care who you are. He see some that ain’t right, he on it. He’s the advocate. … He’s a great guy. He didn’t get to be a grown man.”