A day after the Derek Chauvin ruling, the sheriff’s office in Contra Costa County released a disturbing new video showing one of his officers fatally shooting an unharmed black man in the middle of a Danville intersection last month.
The previously unreleased video features intense graphic footage of Andrew Hall, Danville police officer, and was released hours before Diana Becton, district attorney in Contra Costa, announced two charges against Hall for a separate fatal shooting in 2018. .
Four edited and packaged videos posted Wednesday – taken from Hall’s camera, a camera on a passing vehicle and two stationary cameras at Sycamore Valley Road and Camino Ramon – show in gruesome detail the fatal March 11 shooting of Tyrell Wilson ( 33) on a busy road near Interstate 680.
Their brief encounter increases rapidly from the moment Hall points to Wilson. The officer’s body camera shows it takes 31 seconds to call from Wilson to the fatal shooting.
The sheriff of the county, who has a contract to provide police services in Danville, said he received three 911 calls that morning about a person throwing rocks from the highway at Sycamore Valley Road. Hall drives to the intersection and sees Wilson start crossing the street. Police said he matched the description of the person throwing stones.
“Hello buddy, come here quickly,” Hall shouted at Wilson, who turned his back on the camera footage. Wilson refuses, asks Hall to identify himself and walks away while Hall reprimands him for walking around.
Hall radios for backup and continues with commands while Wilson fires him. Eighteen seconds after the encounter, Wilson turns to see Hall, who is moving forward as Wilson pulls back.
Five seconds later, Hall identifies himself as a Danville police officer. At that point, Wilson was standing in the street. He holds a shopping bag in his left hand and looks like he has a small object on his right – it turns out he’s a knife when Wilson releases the blade. He steps back again, holds the knife and challenges Hall, though the video never shows him jumping to the officer.
“Touch me and you’ll see what’s going on,” Wilson said.
Hall yells at him to drop the knife and draw his gun.
“Kill me,” Wilson said, tapping his side with his right hand and looking up. Wilson takes two short steps forward.
Hall shouts, “Lower the knife!” and fires, hitting the left side of Wilson’s face.
Wilson falls and drops. The two are feet apart and Hall made no attempt to aggravate the situation throughout the exchange.
He does not approach Wilson, who is bleeding in the street, until an officer arrives with extra gloves.
“Why did you shoot him, man?” a voice screams in the background as Hall stands over Wilson, breathing heavily, then radios for medical help. A woman jumps out of a blue sedan and steps into the intersection, identifying herself as a San Francisco police officer. She offers to help.
“Just scene control,” Hall says.
When other officers arrive, they gather a minute after the shooting. His blood flows in the street.
Doctors pronounced Wilson dead at a local hospital on March 17.
Contra Costa County Sheriff David Livingston said in a statement with the newly released recordings that the videos show Wilson posing a threat to Officer Hall.
“Any loss of life is tragic, but the community can now see the truth,” Livingston said in the statement.
The sheriff accused Wilson of throwing “objects, possibly rocks” at passing motorists, claiming that Wilson had “numerous rocks” in his jacket pocket.
“He did threaten Officer Hall,” Livingston said. ‘And he started marching to Officer Hall in the middle of a large intersection. Officers are forced to take seconds to protect themselves and the public, and that is what happened here. ”
John Burris, a civil lawyer representing Wilson’s family, earlier described the shooting as premeditated and said it would not have happened if Hall had been charged earlier in the murder of Laudemer Arboleda. around in his car.
After watching the body-camera video on Wednesday, Burris told The Chronicle the footage showed Hall ‘creating this confrontation and then using his deadly weapon to shoot him unnecessarily.’
Becton addressed reporters at her office in Martinez and did not specifically comment on Wilson’s video. She said the matter was being investigated.
Referring to the voluntary manslaughter and weapons charge she filed in the Arboleda shooting incident, Becton said her office ‘only brings charges that are appropriate and that we believe can be proved by the facts. And that is certainly the case here. ”
Becton said she expects Hall to relinquish himself once a judge signs an arrest warrant, which happened later that day. The warrant set Hall’s bail at $ 220,000. Hall could face up to 22 years in prison if convicted of the charges brought by Becton.
Rachel Swan is a staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected]; Twitter: @rachelswan