Bruce Smith and Jeffrey Collins, Associated Press
Posted: Thursday, April 9, 2015, 1:08 AM
Feidin Santana told NBC News that while walking to work Saturday morning, he saw Officer Michael Thomas Slager controlling Walter Scott on the ground, and began recording when he heard the sound of a Taser. "Mr. Scott was trying just to get away from the Taser," said Santana, a barber originally from the Dominican Republic. "He was just looking for a way to get away from the police."
Slager initially claimed he fired in self-defense after the suspect he had pulled over for a broken brake light grabbed his Taser.
Santana's recording documented a different scenario. It begins at a moment when both men are standing, as Scott pulls away from the officer and an object appearing to be a stun gun falls to the ground, trailing wires. As the unarmed man runs away, Slager pulls out his Glock pistol and fires eight times at the back of the 50-year-old man, until he crumples to the ground about 30 feet away.
Santana also said he didn't see the officer render any first aid to Scott after he was on the ground. Santana said he was so shaken by what he had witnessed that he initially considered erasing the video from his phone and leaving town.
"I felt that my life, with this information, might be in danger," Santana said.
Santana said he changed his mind after reading the version of events as recounted by the police, which didn't match what he had seen. He said he provided the video to the dead man's family because he didn't believe anything would happen to Slager if he didn't come forward.
After the video was made public Tuesday by a lawyer for the family, Slager, 33, was fired and charged with murder. A judge ordered the ex-officer jailed without bond pending trial.
Not once in the moments recorded by Santana can the officer be heard yelling "stop" or telling the man to surrender. Moments after handcuffing the dying man face-down on the ground, Slager walks back to pick up what appears to be the Taser, then returns and drops it at Scott's feet as another officer arrives to check the dying man's condition. Then he picks it up again after exchanging words with the other officer.
The video changed everything, authorities and advocates said Wednesday. "What if there was no video? What if there was no witness, or 'hero' as I call him, to come forward?" the Scott family's lawyer, L. Chris Stewart, said.
The cellphone video is just the latest in a series of clips that have depicted officers killing or injuring unarmed black men in recent years. People behind those cameras have lived to regret the attention, and sometimes danger, that came with involving themselves in such high-profile cases.
Before the North Charleston shooting, a cellphone video of Staten Island, N.Y., resident Eric Garner pleading "I can't breathe" after he was wrestled to the ground, was one of the most jarring clips tied to recent allegations of police brutality.
The man who recorded the fatal clash, Ramsey Orta, 22, told the Los Angeles Times last year that he took the video and made it public because he was furious with officers' treatment of Garner, whom he described as a friendly presence in the neighborhood where he died.
While Orta gave several media interviews in the immediate aftermath of Garner's death, he retreated from public view after he was arrested in August on weapons charges. New York City police allege he was carrying a stolen semiautomatic handgun, but Orta has contended the arrest was retribution, according to the Staten Island Advance.
George Holliday, the Los Angeles man who recorded the beating of Rodney King by four LAPD officers in 1991 after being awakened by sirens, has sometimes wondered if he would have been better off staying in bed the night of the incident. In a 2006 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Holliday said he received death threats when riots followed the officers' acquittal.
Meanwhile, South Carolina officials quietly arrested an officer in connection with a shooting last year. Justin Gregory Craven, 25, a white public safety officer in North Augusta, was charged with discharging a firearm into an occupied vehicle, a felony, in the February 2014 death of black motorist Ernest Satterwhite, 68. Craven has been on administrative leave since the shooting. He could face up to 10 years in prison and a $1,000 fine if convicted.
This article contains information from the Los Angeles Times.
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