Footage has emerged of the moment a 26-year-old black man, Patrick Lyoya, was arrested and got shot in the head by a police officer in Grand Rapids, Michigan on April 4.
The disturbing footage shows a police officer subduing Lyoya, who is seen struggling with the cop, whose identity has not been revealed.
The police officer can be heard telling the victim to stop struggling before pulling his weapon and shooting him in the head.
Eric Winstrom, a former high-ranking Chicago police commander and Grand Rapids’ new police chief since March, Wednesday, shared four videos of the incident which have since gone viral on social media.
Winstrom described the incident as a “tragedy” and “progression of sadness”.
Newly released video shows a Grand Rapids (MI) police officer shooting unarmed 26 yo Patrick Lyoya while he was on the ground & facing away from the officer! Patrick never used violence against this officer even though the officer used violence against him in several instances. pic.twitter.com/5vNSWDYUpz
— Ben Crump (@AttorneyCrump) April 13, 2022
The video shared by Winstrom took footage from Lyoya’s passenger, the officer’s body-worn camera, the officer’s patrol car and a doorbell camera.
From the video, it was learned that the incident started as a case of Lyoya driving without a license plate belonging to the vehicle he was driving.
Originally from French-speaking Congo, Lyoya can be seen exiting the vehicle before the white police officer got out of his.
The police officer then orders him back to his vehicle at which point Lyoya refused.
In an incident that lasted nearly two minutes, Lyoya can be seen taking to his heels.
The police officer, who joined the police in 2015, chased fleeing Lyoya on foot, asked if he spoke English and demanded his driver’s license.
The officer eventually catches up with the victim and the duo briefly struggle over the officer’s taser, which Lyoya held on to.
The police officer repeatedly orders him to release his taser which deploys twice, hitting the ground, but the directive was not obeyed until the shooting occurred.
The Grand Rapids city manager, Mark Washington, said, “When I saw the video, it was painful to watch.
“And I immediately asked, ‘What caused this to happen, and what more could have been done to prevent this from occurring?’”
On Tuesday during a City Commission meeting over the incident, activists were critical of Grand Rapids leaders for failing to look into years of policing issues in the city, where 18 percent of the population is black.
However, Winstrom said it was too early to draw conclusions until the end of an investigation into the incident, which The Herald learnt is being conducted by the Michigan State Police and the Kent County Prosecutor’s Office.