- A newly released video depicts a January 2016 incident in which a police officer shoots an unarmed man after berating and intimidating him.
- The officer in the video was acquitted on Thursday of second-degree murder.
- The victim was shot in a hotel hallway after police were called to respond to reports of someone pointing a gun out of a window.
A newly-released video shows an Arizona police officer shooting and killing an unarmed man in January 2016 after the man, who was crying and begging for his life, made a mistake in complying with his orders.
The body camera footage was released on Friday by the judge presiding over Officer Philip Brailsford's trial after Brailsford was acquitted on Thursday for the killing.
The victim, 26-year-old pest control worker Daniel Shaver, was staying in the La Quinta Inn & Suites in Mesa, Arizona while on a business trip when police received a call that someone was pointing a gun out of the window of the hotel, Newsweek reported. While Shaver had reportedly been showing off a pellet gun to two guests that night, according to witnesses, he was unarmed when the police confronted him in the hallway of the hotel.
In the video, Brailsford is heard commanding Shaver to get on the floor and crawl towards him, all while berating him and intimidating him with death threats. Shaver appeared to be complying with his orders, and can be heard sobbing as he crawls towards Brailsford. But after Shaver reached back toward his pant leg, Brailsford shot him five times with his AR-15, believing he was reaching for a gun.
"Please don't shoot me," Shaver begged Brailsford, moments before his death.
After being charged with second-degree murder in May 2016, Brailsford was acquitted after less than six hours of deliberation by a jury, Vice
During the trial, Brailsford maintained that he did nothing wrong.
"If this situation happened exactly as it did that time, I would have done the same thing," Brailsford stated in court.
"There are no winners in this case," Brailsford's lawyer Michael Piccarreta said after the verdict was announced. "Mitch Brailsford had to make a split-second decision on a situation that he was trained to recognize as someone drawing a weapon and had one second to react."
Shaver is survived by his wife and two daughters. His wife and parents are filing a wrongful death suit against the Mesa Police Department, according to Vice News.
The Brutal Police Execution of Daniel Shaver
- Shaun King (@ShaunKing) December 8, 2017
Sadly I've studied 100s of videos of American police executing non-violent, unarmed people. This is one of the worst I've ever witnessed.
This happened in January of 2016, but the judge just released the video.
A grave injustice. pic.twitter.com/O3UjLb3mZJ