The family of a 31-year-old man who was shot and killed by a D.C. police officer over the weekend says the body camera video of the shooting shows the shooting was unwarranted. News4’s Mark Segraves reports on the mayor’s response when the family interrupted a news conference about the matter.
Body camera and surveillance video D.C. police released Friday shows an officer shooting and killing a man last weekend in the Brightwood Park neighborhood of Northwest.
Videos from the Metropolitan Police Department show the moments an officer shot and killed 31-year-old Kevin Hargraves-Shird.
The officer, who police identified as Sgt. Reinaldo Otero-Camacho, was pursuing a vehicle police believe was involved in the shooting of two teenagers just minutes earlier.
Body camera video shows the white sedan crash into the curb at 2nd and Madison streets NW. Three men jump out of the car and run.
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As Otero-Camacho pulls up to the crash, he takes out his gun, and at about the same time, Hargraves-Shird gets out of the car's driver's seat and begins to run.
Otero-Camacho then opens his cruiser door and yells "gun" multiple times. He then fires one shot, killing Hargraves-Shird.
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In a news conference Friday, D.C. Police Chief Robert Contee said the bullet went into Hargraves-Shird's ear and was fired from about 35 yards away.
Hargraves-Shird was carrying a gun, which could be seen next to his body after the shooting, police said.
The U.S. Attorney's Office launched an independent investigation of the shooting and MPD will conduct an internal review.
"There are questions about whether it was justified or unjustified. We’re nowhere near being able to make that determination at this point just based on information that we have so far," Contee said.
As Contee and D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser answered reporters' questions, Hargraves-Shird's family interrupted the news conference and demanded answers to their questions.
"Our practice is to answer questions from the press," Bowser said.
"That’s my brother … You guys are saying 'Gun, gun, gun.' That never happened on that video. I seen it. It never happened," yelled the victim's sister, Serena Hargraves.
"Ok .. what we said ma'am, what we said from the outset is that what we know right now is what we can see on the video. …The video has been released and people can see and confirm what the chief has said," Bowser replied.
Hargraves-Shird's family insisted the officer had no reason to shoot him.
"He murdered my brother. That’s it," Serena Hargraves told News4.
The U.S. Attorney's Office launched an independent investigation of the shooting and MPD will conduct an internal review.
"What we can say for sure is that we don’t know everything just looking at the video and that is why the investigation proceeding accordingly is so important so that we can get to the bottom of what happened," Bowser said.
Otero-Camacho is a 17-year veteran of the department. He is on administrative leave pending the investigation.
Officers are not required by law to give a statement to the attorney's office, and, as of Friday afternoon, Otero-Camacho had not given a statement.
