Multiple videos surfaced online yesterday of cops in New Jersey shooting a shirtless man as he was walking around a front yard.
Vineland police said they thought he had a bomb. Witnesses say he was holding a water bottle. Other witnesses say he was holding nothing.
Nobody but police thought he had a bomb.
It all started when a call came through the 911 emergency line Saturday of a man acting suspicious, prompting multiple police officers to arrive on scene at 11:22 a.m., according to the Daily Journal.
The first video was posted by Tina Wainwright on Facebook of what happened before the shooting.
A minute and ten seconds into the video, the man can be seen pacing forwards and backwards, continuing to do so for more than two minutes, stopping only to crouch and sway.
A second video was posted on Facebook Live by Ryonna Maven.
Maven’s video starts out while the man is crouched and swaying.
“They out this bitch deep,” Maven says as she pans over the five patrol vehicles.
Two minutes and fifteen seconds into the second video, Maven can be heard telling the people watching live that they are making people back up and move.
“They got guns all on his ass, he’s getting closer to the fucking dog,” Maven says within ten seconds of the K9 appearing.
The man then attempts to flee and the officers fire multiple shots.
“Oh my God! They just killed him. Oh my God. Oh my fucking God. Oh my God, and the dog is biting his fucking face,” Maven says.
Maven then tries to get closer by running to the adjacent corner of the intersection.
“They making the dog bite him,” Maven says three-and-a-half minutes into the video.
She repeats once more around three minutes and forty-five seconds.
At that point, the officers shift their focus from trying to help get the dog off of the man to the crowd of witnesses.
Around four minutes into the video you can hear an officer yell out for “crowd control” as witnesses started to all gather up on that corner of the intersection.
“Back up, back the fuck up,” an officer can be heard demanding.
Thirty seconds go by from when she last said that the dog was attacking till she says that they put him in handcuffs.
Maven says five minutes into the video repeating an officer:
“Talking about he had a bomb.”
“You can see what the fuck is in his hands,” a witness says.
The crowd continues to yell as the officers push them away from the scen so they can tape off the area.
According to Press of Atlantic City:
““If he had a gun, it would have been different,” she said. “He didn’t have no gun.”
Maven described the man as Hispanic and in his late 20s.”
The prosecutor’s office confirmed that it’s leading the investigation as per state attorney general guidelines for incidents that involve use of force by police, according to the Daily Journal.
Vineland police were caught on video in 2015 allowing a police dog to maul a man on the ground. The victim in that incident, Phillip White, died from the mauling, but police told his mother he died of a heart attack.
The cops were cleared in that case after an autopsy conducted by the . state determined he died from having a “toxic level” of PCP.
