Dashboard footage from a fatal police shooting in Bridgeton, New Jersey confirm eyewitness accounts that the victim was stepping out of the car with his arms raised when officers shot and killed him, the Press of Atlantic City reports.
Police in Bridgeton pulled over the car in which Jerame Reid was a passenger on December 30th. Prosecutors said that “during the course of the stop a handgun was revealed and later recovered,” but witnesses said that Officers Braheme Days and Roger Worley opened fire and killed Reid as he was peacefully exiting the vehicle.
Tahli Dawkins told the Press of Atlantic City that he watched the officers approaching the car yelling, “Don’t effing move!” and that they opened fire without provocation.
Denzel Mosley told KYW-TV that Reid’s hands were “in plain sight,” and that the officers “were telling him, ‘Get out [of] the car,’” then yelling “‘Stop!’ and they started shooting.”
Ben Mosley — a retired sheriff’s deputy — said that Reid may have attempted to get back into the car when the officers yelled the contradictory order to “Stop!” but that he did not believe that justified firing upon him.
“I saw a disarmed man go down to the ground and get shot,” Mosley said. “That’s exactly what I saw.”
The video — obtained by the Press of Atlantic City but not released to the public — confirmed these eye-witness accounts.
“Show me your hands. Show me your f—— hands,” Days said, before quickly adding, “Get him out of the car, Rog[er Worley], we got a gun in his glove compartment.”
After the gun is retrieved, Days continued to yell at Reid. “I tell you, I’m going to shoot you,” he shouted. “You’re gonna be f—— dead. You reach for something, you’re going to be f—— dead.”
Reid then attempted to exit the vehicle with his hands raised, at which point Officer Days yelled, “Don’t you f—— move!” before he and Worley opened fire, discharging their weapons at least six times.
Conrad Benedetto, the attorney for the Reid family, said after viewing the video on Tuesday that “you see that there was no threat to the officer, and no weapons in the victim’s hands.”
Walter Hudson, chair and founder of the civil rights group the National Awareness Alliance, said that “the video speaks for itself that at no point was Jerame Reid a threat and he possessed no weapon on his person. He complied with the officer and the officer shot him.”
