An Arkansas man came close to losing his life Sunday when a cop pulled a gun on him, accusing him of holding a gun as the man sat inside his car with his hands extended out the window.
“Shut the car off!” the Helena-West Helena cop ordered, keeping his gun pointed at the man.
“He’s got a gun!” the cop yells to his fellow cops.
“Where?” Edrick Truitt asks, keeping his hands extended out the window.
“Gun! Shut the car off!” the cop says.
“Where? Where? My hands are in the air,” Truitt responds, refusing to shut his car off because that would require him to bring his hands back into the car where the cop has already imagined seeing a gun.
Truitt did have a gun in the back seat but it was legal and out-of-reach and it was not visible to the cop. And Truitt had not done anything to give the cop probable cause that he was armed and dangerous.
It appears as if Truitt was part of a group of black people hanging out in the parking lot of a convenience store/gas station at 3 a.m. Sunday morning when police arrived and ordered them to disperse.
Truitt says he was trying to leave when another car blocked him in, which the cop took as a deliberate refusal to follow his orders.
Helena-West Helena police say they will release body cam footage to show what “truly transpired” as News Channel 3 phrases it.