Police footage on Thursday revealed how Columbus, Ohio, officers handcuffed an apparently lifeless Black man after he shot him several times and then stood around for five minutes and 11 seconds without providing first aid.
Andre Hill, 47, had a cellphone in his left hand but no weapons when he emerged from a friend’s garage on December 22 and was shot dead.
After the shooting, a woman came out of the house and told police, ‘He brought me Christmas money. He did nothing ‘, according to the video from the camera. The footage instructed her to return to the residence without asking her questions.
Ben Crump, the Hill family’s attorney, said an officer now fired had opened fire without first giving Hill verbal instructions to stop and raise his hands. Crump said Hill was shot four times.
“It’s really hard to stay here because I’m totally furious about how they treated my brother,” Hill’s older sister, Shawna Barnett, told a news conference after the body camera videos were released. ‘no sense. They showed no humanity to him. How do you sleep at night knowing you did it and left him there and had the nerve to turn him around and handcuff him but not offer help. Nothing. ‘
Hill’s family has appealed to prosecutors to prosecute former Columbus officer Adam Coy in Hill’s death.
Hill’s daughter, Karissa Hill, 27, who lived with her father with her three young children, said in a trembling voice that she would have to remember for the rest of her life how no one helped him.
“How there are 22 officers at the scene and with a camera footage and none of them helped my dad. But the first time they touch him is to put on handcuffs,” she said.
According to Crump, police showed the family members the video Thursday morning with him and other attorneys who were working on the case.
“Where is the humanity for Andre Hill? Where is the humanity for this Columbus citizen who committed no crime, had no weapon, was unarmed, only had a cell phone? Where is humanity for this citizen, for this father, this grandfather, this brother? “Crump said.” It makes you wonder if they tried to save his life by putting handcuffs on him, would Andre Hill be with us today? “
Hill was fatally shot after Coy and another officer, Amy Detweiler, responded to a 311 non-emergency call for a sound complaint.
The body camera video was released a day after police released an “informative summary” of the interview investigators conducted with Detweiler. In the interview, Detweiler said she heard Coy shout that Hill had a gun in his hand. She could not remember whether Coy had given Hill an order to drop a weapon.
Detweiler said she did not see a gun in Hill’s hand and that she did not detect any threats from Hill during the incident.
Coy only turned on his body camera after shooting at Hill. But his camera was activated automatically and recorded 60 seconds of the episode without sound.
Crump said he and Detweiler, after shooting Coy Hill, stood near him for five minutes and 11 seconds.
“He is struggling to breathe on the ground and none of the police officers have provided him with medical assistance,” Crump said.
He said that although Hill was lying motionless on the ground, a police supervisor told officers to handcuff him. Crump said officers then left Hill in handcuffs for 13 minutes without providing first aid.
“You see in the video that they handcuffed a dying man, who was unarmed, who shot them multiple times for a non-emergency 311 call,” Crump said. “What is his crime? Why do they keep him handcuffed?”
Michelle Hariston, another of Hill’s sisters, added that after watching the camera videos, she left the impression that police officers were treating her brother ‘like an animal’.
“He was preyed upon, and he got no chances,” Hariston said. “We are absolutely furious about what happened.”
Columbus Police Chief Thomas Quinlan released a video statement Thursday in which he said his initial reaction to watching the videos was “anger and deep disappointment.”
“I know it’s horrible to anyone who’s watching it,” Quinlan said. “One of the core values of the Columbus Department of Police is compassion. And the camera-twisted camera video released today shows little evidence of that. Let me repeat what I said last week: Andre Hill should be alive today. “A Columbus police officer is responsible for his death. I can not defend it. I can not correct it.”
Quinlan added that the violations of police policy and standards by Coy “were so obvious and so severe that his termination could not wait.”
He said Coy is facing an independent criminal investigation by the state and the U.S. Department of Justice.
Andrew J. Ginther, mayor of Columbus, also issued a statement condemning what he saw in the body imagery.
‘Like most people who watched the additional camera footage of Andre Hill and the next time, I was appalled at the time that passed before any officer assisted Mr. “Hill,” Ginther said. ‘Our officers are trained to provide potential life-saving care, and at the very least, comfort in these situations. One of the core values of the Police Division is compassion. None of this was clear in the video released today. ‘
Ginther said he had instructed Quinlan to “fully and thoroughly investigate” the incident and to hold all officers who did not maintain the standards of the department accountable. ‘
But Michael Wright, another lawyer representing Hill’s family, claimed that the police department had numerous chances in the past to terminate Coy, adding that an investigation his office had allegedly found 90 charges against Coy has that dating back to 2001. He said 16 of the complaints were substantiated.
“That means there must have been some kind of action,” Wright said.
The lawyer did not elaborate on what the reported complaints regarding Coy stemmed from, and police have not yet commented on the former officer’s record.
Wright showed reporters an enlarged copy of a report Quinlan wrote about Coy when he was his patrol lieutenant in 2008.
“In a letter I wrote in 2008, while Officer Coy’s patrol lieutenant, I made the following remark about, if sustained improvements are not fully realized, a decision must follow whether Officer Coy is salvageable,” wrote Quinlan according to the document Wright showed to reporters. “If the above interventions do not yield the desired results, a shift towards termination is necessary, as the service of Officer Coy to the Police Division will lose all future value.”
“It doesn’t have to happen,” Wright said. “If the Columbus Police Department]had done their job and Adam Coy had quit before it happened, we would not be standing here today.”
ABC News’ Andy Fies contributed to this report.