COPA Releases Body Camera Video Of Fatal Police Shooting Of Turell Brown In Englewood
CHICAGO (CBS) -- The Civilian Office of Police Accountability has released Chicago Police body camera video showing an officer shooting and killing 28-year-old Turell Brown last month, after he started waving a knife at officers responding to a domestic disturbance call in Englewood.
Officers responded to a domestic incident shortly after 11 a.m. on Sept. 19 at an apartment building in the 6500 block of South Harvard Avenue.
Police have said Brown confronted the officers while armed with a knife, and an officer shot him. Brown was later pronounced dead.
Tuesday afternoon, COPA released body camera footage that shows two officers entering the apartment Brown and his girlfriend shared, and questioning Brown's girlfriend, who told police he had punched her several times after they got into a fight about laundry.
Brown's girlfriend then told police Brown was in the back room of the apartment and had a knife.
When the officers began moving toward the back room, Brown can be heard shouting at them, and the officers then back out of the apartment as they draw their guns. Moments later, Brown can be seen emerging from the back room, holding a knife and waving it at officers, telling them to leave.
The officers repeatedly ordered Brown to drop the weapon before one of them fired three shots. Brown was standing several feet away from the officers at the time, and was not moving toward them when the officer shot him.
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Brown stumbled backwards through a doorway of the apartment, before coming out again for a moment, and then collapsing onto the floor.
The partner of the officer who fired the shots can then be seen performing chest compressions on Brown as more police arrive on the scene, waiting for paramedics to arrive. Another officer later takes over performing chest compressions on Brown, who is unresponsive throughout the video footage after he falls to the floor.
Brown's mother, Angela Wade-Brown, has questioned why police shot her son.
She told CBS 2's Steven Graves last month that the disturbance to which police responded was a quarrel between her son and his girlfriend. She knows that because the girlfriend called her soon after it happened.
Wade-Brown said she got the call from her son's girlfriend on the morning police shot him.
"She called me at 11 this morning," Wade-Brown said. "She said, 'You need to get out here because the police just shot your son.'"
Wade-Brown said police had no answers when she got to the apartment, so she talked to her son's girlfriend further – later telling her the two got into a quarrel on a lower floor, and then it came up to the apartment,
"He went into the bedroom, shut the door, and she stayed in the living room and called police," Wade-Brown said.
Brown then opened the bedroom door, his mother said. Chicago Police confirmed what Brown's girlfriend claimed, that Brown was carrying a knife at that time.
"They asked him to put the knife down and I guess he didn't, so then she says they shot him," Wade-Brown said.
Wade-Brown said that was not the first time her son and his girlfriend argued, or that police were called to get involved.
"I told him if they couldn't get along, they shouldn't be there. But they were still being back together," she said. "But I felt like even though they might have had their arguments, or whatever, it wasn't a cause for him to lose his life. They didn't have to shoot to kill him. They could have shot him in the arm and for him to drop the weapon. They could have shot him in the leg. But they shot and they killed him. And I feel like he didn't have to lose his life because of that."
COPA said its investigation into the officer's use of force remains open.
