Police in Grand Rapids, Michigan have released several videos showing a police officer’s interaction with Patrick Lyoya moments before the officer fatally shot him earlier this month.
On 13 April, the department released roughly 20 minutes of footage stitching together images from the officer’s police cruiser dashboard camera, the officer’s body-worn camera, surveillance camera footage from a nearby home, and phone video captured by a person riding in a car with Loyoya.
That video shows the officer – who has not been named – struggling to arrest Lyoya, a 26-year-old Black man, before holding him to the ground and fatally shooting him.
Videos show the officer interacting with Lyoya after pulling him over during a traffic stop. Lyoya exits the car, the officer asks whether he speaks English, and the officer tells him the plates are not registered to the car as Lyoya asks what he did. The officer asks for his driver’s licence, and Lyoya turns to the door and asks the passenger something that is inaudible in the video. Lyoya briefly points inside the car, then closes the driver’s side door and begins to walk to the front of the car.
Body-camera footage shows the officer then saying “no, no, no, stop” and “put your hands behind your head” and grabbing Lyoya’s arms. Lyoya can then be seen pushing away and running to the sidewalk before he is tackled on a nearby lawn.
The two men struggle on the ground, and the officer tells him to “stop resisting”.
The officer also unholsters his Taser and fires towards Lyoya, who then appears to grab it from him.
At that point, the officer’s camera was “deactivated,” according to law enforcement.
“The button was hit multiple times during the incident, however, it was only held down for long enough once during the altercation,” Grand Rapids Police Chief Eric Winstrom said during a briefing on 13 April.
The passenger’s phone video captures the officer pinning Lyoya to the lawn with his face to the ground while shouting “drop the Taser”.
With his firearm unholstered, he fires a shot into Lyoya. He tells the passenger filming the video to “get back”.
The officer fired a single shot to Lyoya’s head while his face was toward the ground, according to Chief Winstrom.
The struggle lasted roughly 90 seconds and the officer fired the Taser twice, according to police. Both shots hit the ground and did not hit Lyoya.
Backup officers arrived three minutes later. Police did not recover a weapon from Lyoya.
The officer – who has been on the force since 2015 – was placed on administrative leave as Michigan State Police begin an investigation, according to law enforcement officials.
Kent County prosecutors initially requested that law enforcement not release any evidence until the conclusion of an investigation. An autopsy report from Kent County medical examiner’s office will not be released until the conclusion of the state police probe.
Lyoya’s family and the ACLU of Michigan have urged the release of the footage of the shooting, which his family and Kent County Commissioner Robert Womack have described as an “execution”.
The family emigrated from the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2014. Patrick Lyoya lived in Grand Rapids while the rest of the family lives in Lansing.
Protest across Grand Rapids have demanded accountability in the wake of his death. Dozens of people rallied outside a city commission meeting on 12 April.
