A 44-year-old African American man died on April at the hands of a white sheriff's deputy in Tulsa, Oklahoma, who allegedly thought he was firing a Taser at him and not his regulation sidearm.
In a video that has been widely reported on and shown by U.S. media, deputy Bob Bates, 73, is heard to say, "Oh, I shot him. I'm sorry" after firing once at Eric Harris after he had been subdued by other officers after a chase.
"Oh, God. Oh, he shot me," says Harris, who tells the officers holding him that is having trouble breathing, while one of them is pressing his face to the ground as he is lying face down and spread-eagled.
"F--- your breath," responds one of the officers to the African American, who was taken by ambulance to the city's hospital emergency room, where he died an hour later.
The sheriff's office, in an April 2 statement, said that Harris had tried to sell a weapon to an undercover cop but then realized it was a sting operation and took off running whereupon an "altercation" occurred.
The statement says that Harris fought with police and was a "known" criminal with a police record.
The video was recorded with two body-cameras being worn by officers at the scene and was released at the request of Harris's family, according to another statement by the sheriff's office.
Last Friday, at a press conference, Tulsa Police Sgt. Jim Clark, who is in charge of the investigation into the shooting, said that in the confusion of the take-down Bates drew his firearm by mistake, thinking he was pulling out his Taser.
Bates works for the sheriff's office as a reserve deputy, a group of law enforcement officers comprised of civilians trained to augment the department's manpower on a part-time basis.
The video on Harris's shooting comes a week after controversy erupted over the death - also filmed on video - of Walter Scott, who was shot multiple times in the back as he was fleeing by a white police officer in North Charleston, South Carolina. EFE
Source: Top Stories - Google News - http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&fd=R&ct2=us&usg=AFQjCNFU9k19vGEF9LSUing_CVFqhqTmiQ&clid=c3a7d30bb8a4878e06b80cf16b898331&cid=52778799948320&ei=Lx0sVbjeEouG3AGApIGQBw&url=http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2015/04/13/unarmed-black-suspect-dies-at-hands-white-cop-in-oklahoma/
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