By James Simons-
Newly released Bodycam footage of a police officer fatally shooting a 13-year-old boy last month appears to show the teenager holding his hands up before he is shot.
Adam Toledo can be seen running away from police down an alley way in Chicago as the officer shouts for him to stop and show his hands.
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The officer fires a single round into his chest less than a second after he turns around with his hands up.
It does not appear in the video that Adam was holding a weapon when he turned around, and his hands were up.
The teenager was shot and killed in an alleyway in Chicago in the early hours of 29 March.
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The video footage was released Thursday by Chicago’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability. Adam’s family viewed it on Wednesday.
The boy stops and appears to hold his hands up as the officer shouts “drop it”.
A shot is then heard as the officer repeats the command, and the boy crumples to the ground while the officer asks if he is alright and calls for an ambulance.
The footage shows it took 19 seconds from when the officer left his police car to when he shot the teenager.
Further footage was released showing the officer telling the boy to “stay awake” as other officers arrive.
The first officer says he cannot feel a heartbeat and starts administering CPR as the other officers say “stay awake”.
Gun Shots
Chicago Police said the shooting happened after officers responded to gunshots detected by police technology before dawn on 29 March in the predominantly Latino and black Little Village neighbourhood on the city’s West Side.
The teenager, who was Latino, and a 21-year-old man ran off when confronted by police before Adam was shot.
The man was arrested on a misdemeanour charge of resisting arrest.
This is the second widely publicised US shooting of a black or Latino person during the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who is accused of killing black man George Floyd last year by kneeling on his neck.
In the days before, footage of a white police officer shooting black man Daunte Wright during a traffic stop sparked protests in the same city the trial is taking place in.
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Kim Potter, who claims to have accidentally used her gun instead of her Taser, was charged on Wednesday with second-degree manslaughter.
The video of Adam was posted by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability on Thursday after initially saying it could not release the video because it involved the shooting of a minor.
But Chicago’s mayor and police superintendent called for it to be released.
Before it was released, shops in downtown Chicago’s “Magnificent Mile” boarded up their windows in anticipation.
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