Graphic police body camera footage released by the Muskogee, Oklahoma police department shows a dramatic scene in which a police officer fatally shot a man after responding to a 911 call from a church pastor who said that the man was threatening a woman with a gun during a wedding.
The shooting has a racial element, as the officer, Chansey McMillin, is white, while the man he shot, 21-year-old Terence Walker, is black.
The shooting occurred Jan. 16 after McMillin responded to a 911 call placed by Pastor Andre Jones of the Old Agency Baptist Church.
“He’s here with a gun,” Jones said of Walker on the 911 call. “I need a police officer because I got to stop this. I got a whole bunch of people here, and I don’t need nobody hurt.”
“It was right after the wedding when everything happened. The young girl came into my office crying. I asked what was wrong and she said, ‘I’m going to be killed,’” Jones told Tulsa’s Fox 23.
“I told her he doesn’t have a gun and she said, ‘Yes he does. He showed me yesterday and told me he has a bullet especially for me,'” Jones said.
Walker was the woman’s ex-boyfriend.
Other witnesses corroborated her story, saying that Walker had told her that he “had a bullet with her name on it.”
As footage from McMillin’s body camera shows, he approached Walker in the parking lot of the church and began questioning him. He asked Walker “what are you shaking for,” as the man seemed nervous.
Moments later, Walker bolted. McMillin gave chase.
During the pursuit, Walker paused and bent over to grab something he apparently dropped on the ground.
That’s when McMillin, believing Walker was aiming a gun at him, fired five shots.
Walker was hit and is seen plunging into a ditch on the side of the road. McMillin then immediately jumps onto his police radio, yelling “shots fired, shots fired.”
A man who appears to have come from the church is seen running into the middle of the road towards Walker’s lifeless body, saying “don’t shoot no more.”
McMillin is heard screaming, “Get back!” repeatedly.
Other officers then show up to the scene. An officer who began searching Walker is seen grabbing something from Walker’s body and tossing it into the grass. McMillin moves towards the object which appears to be a gun.
“Why’d he have to do that?” McMillin is heard saying later as fellow officers console him.
The Muskogee police department says it released the video of the shooting in order to provide transparency to the community.
“It is our belief that the video clearly shows the suspect pointing the gun at the officer,” Muskogee police Sgt. Michael Mahan told reporters.
The use of police body cameras have become a focal point recently following the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri back in August 2014. Brown was black, and the officer who shot him, Darren Wilson, was white. The shooting sparked a nationwide outcry over alleged police racism.
The shooting was McMillin’s second. Last July he shot a knife-wielding man who had stabbed someone and then advanced towards police. McMillin was cleared in that incident and is on administrative leave for the most recent one.
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