The man who was wrongly accused of being a suspect during the Dallas shooting Thursday night said he thinks the system was unfairly “trying to get him.”
The Dallas Police Department tweeted out a photo of Mark Hughes — a black man in a camouflage shirt and black shorts carrying a rifle through a crowd of protesters — and asked people to please help them find him because he was a suspect. They later said he was misidentified as a person of interest.
This is one of our suspects. Please help us find him! pic.twitter.com/Na5T8ZxSz6
— Dallas Police Depart (@DallasPD) July 8, 2016
He gave an interview after he emerged from a police interrogation room after 30 minutes Friday morning. (RELATED: Dallas Person Of Interest’s Brother: ‘He Gave His Gun To A Cop — It’s Not Him’)
“I can’t believe it,” Hughes said. “The crazy thing about it is with hindsight, I could easily have been shot.”
“With police officers lying, saying they have video of me shooting, which is a lie, saying that they have witnesses saying that I shot a gun, which is a lie. The system was trying to get me.”
(Photo: CBS screen grab)
Hughes said he immediately found a cop after police circulated his photo.
“I didn’t know. We received a phone call that my face was on there as a suspect and immediately I flagged down a police officer.”
“I was talking to police, laughing and joking with police officers.”
Man wrongly labeled as person of interest in #dallaspoliceshooting "I can't believe it.I can't believe it." Via KTVT pic.twitter.com/n37cY7h9hk
— Dr. Seema Yasmin (@DoctorYasmin) July 8, 2016
Hughes said officers did not apologize for misidentifying him. (RELATED: Slain Dallas Police Officer — Brent Thompson — Was Just Married Two Weeks Ago)
“You know what? Now you all have my face on the national news, are y’all going to come out and say ‘This young man had nothing to do with it’? We’re getting death threats.”
“There was injustice going on, there was persecution on me, unrightly, and I feel they [the police] need to do something about that. Apology? I am not satisfied with an apology.”