New cellphone footage allegedly shows Delaware police officers in a fatal encounter with a man in a wheelchair on Wednesday. The officers had responded to a call reporting that the man had shot himself. A relative called the death an “execution.”
The video allegedly depicts the grizzly shooting of Jeremy McDole, a 28-year-old African-American who was sitting in a wheelchair, by three white Delaware police officers.
The footage opens with a white officer running towards McDole saying, “He’s over here! Show me your hands! Show me your hands.”
Warning: The video contains graphic footage.
Then McDole comes into view sitting upright in his wheelchair. Off-screen, a shot is fired. It is not clear where the shot comes from.
McDole is then seen leaning forward while still sitting in the chair.
The police officer continues to yell at the man, demanding that he show his hands and repeatedly shouting, “Drop the gun,” with bystanders yelling in chorus “Drop the gun.”
Two more police officers arrive on the scene and also shout “Drop the gun” several times.
Off-screen, a man’s can be heard saying “Put your hands up, cus. They shot his ass.”
The police officers continue shouting for McDole to show his hands, then the camera zooms in and blood can be seen around McDole’s neck area. He is gently rocking back and forth in the wheelchair, moving his hands along his legs but not raising them. Police, meanwhile, keep yelling for him to put his hands up.
The footage then narrows to show just McDole, and the police officers are no longer visible. A volley of at least 7 shots can be heard.
McDole then slumps left, rolls out of his chair and falls to the ground, with blood visible on the front of his body.
Police have released few details, but they said McDole had a handgun when officers allegedly shot him to death.
At a press conference held at the scene of the shooting on Thursday, a crowd of two dozen people gathered to protest the incident.
McDole’s uncle, Eugene Smith, was among them.
“It was an execution. That’s what it was. I don’t care if he was black, white, whatever,” Smith said, as reported by CBS News.
Smith said he saw his nephew 15 minutes before the shooting and that McDole had not had a gun – only a book bag.
Smith said McDole had gotten out of a jail about a year ago and was living in a nursing home near the scene of the shooting. McDole had been in a wheelchair since being shot in the back when he was 18.
The Delaware Department of Justice’s Office of Civil Rights and Public Trust is investigating the shooting and will determine whether the officers acted within the law. The agency investigates all police shootings that result in injury or death.