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Tulsa Police Shooting Investigated By Justice Department

(CNN)From dif­fer­ent angles, the videos show the same scene.

By Max Blau, Jason Morris and Catherine E. Shoichet, CNN

Updated 12:21 AM ET, Wed September 21, 2016

An unarmed black man walks on a Tulsa, Oklahoma, road with his hands in the air. Police offi­cers fol­low close­ly behind him as he approach­es his vehi­cle. He stands beside the car, then falls to the ground after one offi­cer pulls the trigger.
Now 40-year-old Terence Crutcher is dead. Crutcher’s sis­ter is demand­ing that pros­e­cu­tors charge the offi­cer who shot him. And the police videos of the inci­dent are fuel­ing crit­i­cism about the case.
Federal, state and local author­i­ties are inves­ti­gat­ing the Friday night shooting.
Crutcher’s fam­i­ly says he was wait­ing for help on the road after his SUV broke down.
The offi­cer’s attor­ney says she was afraid Crutcher was reach­ing for a weapon when she opened fire. Attorney Benjamin Crump, part of the legal team rep­re­sent­ing Crutcher’s fam­i­ly, coun­tered at a Tuesday news con­fer­ence that Crutcher’s win­dow was rolled up, mak­ing it unlike­ly he was reach­ing into the car.

911 call reported man running from vehicle

Two 911 calls brought offi­cers to the scene about 7:30 p.m. Friday.
The first came from a woman who said an aban­doned vehi­cle was block­ing the street and a man was run­ning away, warn­ing that it was going to blow up.
“Somebody left their vehi­cle run­ning in the mid­dle of the street with their doors wide open,” the caller said. “The doors are open, the vehi­cle is still run­ning. It’s an SUV. It’s in the mid­dle of the street, it’s block­ing traffic.”
Officer Betty Shelby was the first to arrive, but she was­n’t respond­ing to the 911 call, said her attor­ney, Scott Wood. Shelby was en route to a domes­tic vio­lence call when she encoun­tered Crutcher, who she thought might be impaired, and then the SUV in the mid­dle of the road, Wood said.
She asked Crutcher whether the car belonged to him but got no response, the attor­ney said. Crutcher began walk­ing toward her with his hands in his pock­ets. She polite­ly asked Crutcher to take his hands out of his pock­et while they were speak­ing, Wood said.
“He does com­ply and puts his hands out of his pock­et, and then puts his hands up in the air, which she thought was a lit­tle bit strange under the cir­cum­stances,” he said.
Crutcher con­tin­ued to ignore Shelby’s ques­tions about the vehi­cle and at one point walks toward the back of the police cruis­er and puts his hands back in his pock­ets, the attor­ney said. Shelby called dis­patch and was intent on arrest­ing him because she thought he was under the influ­ence of some­thing, he said.
She drew her gun and ordered Crutcher to get on his knees, which he refused to do, Wood said. He instead walked toward his car.

‘Very disturbing’ video

Videos police released Monday show some of what hap­pened next. The footage is “very dis­turb­ing and dif­fi­cult to watch,” Tulsa police Chief Chuck Jordan told reporters.
The videos show Shelby and sev­er­al oth­er offi­cers at the scene.
Tulsa police offi­cers also were fly­ing above the scene in a heli­copter, cap­tur­ing the inci­dent from an on-board cam­era. Footage from mul­ti­ple police cam­eras show Crutcher walk­ing toward his SUV in the mid­dle of the road, hands raised, fol­lowed close­ly by Shelby and three oth­er offi­cers. They approach Crutcher, who con­tin­ued to walk back to his car, where he appeared to move his hands toward the vehicle.
Circling above the scene, one police offi­cer in the heli­copter can be heard refer­ring to Crutcher as a “bad dude.”
See full sto­ry here: http://​www​.cnn​.com/​2​0​1​6​/​0​9​/​2​0​/​u​s​/​o​k​l​a​h​o​m​a​-​t​u​l​s​a​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​s​h​o​o​t​i​ng/