Video: Body-camera Footage Released Proves Police Shot De’Von Bailey as He Ran Away

Body-camera footage released from the Colorado Springs Police Department shows the death of De’Von Bailey, a 19-year-old Black man. The officers claimed that they shot Bailey and another young man because he reached for a gun.

But the body-camera footage shows Bailey running down the street away from the officers – and then being hit with bullets three times in the back and once in the right arm in the Aug. 3 incident, according to a coroner’s report.

He later died in the hospital.

According to the police, they recovered a gun at the scene, and said the officers who fired — Van’t Land and Officer Blake Evenson — saw Bailey reaching toward his waist as he ran away.

But Bailey’s family isn’t going to let this go, especially now that the body-camera footage has been released.

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“Mr. Bailey was trying desperately to flee from the police. He did not have any weapon in his hand, and he had not shown any weapon when he was shot in the back and killed,” Darold Killmer, one of the family’s attorneys, told reporters at a news conference. “He was doing everything in his power … to get away… That is what he was doing.”

The graphic and difficult to watch body-camera footage has ignited several violent protests, including one where two white men drove up on a crowd and pulled out their guns. They were arrested but not shot – unlike Bailey.

Colorado Springs is a city where police have fatally shot five people this year.

In light of everything, Bailey’s family is calling – loudly- for an independent investigation.

Killmer, the family’s lawyer, said that the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office and Colorado Springs police have a “conflict of interest” as they regularly investigate each other’s fatal shootings.

“You hand off the investigation to your friends,” he said, “and things come out okay.”

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