An 18-year-old black man, reportedly naked and “acting aggressively” in a residential area of northeast Austin, Texas, was shot and killed by a police officer on Monday. Some of the incident was captured on the officer’s dash cam, but the shooting itself took place out of frame, the Austin American-Statesman reports. The officer involved, whose name hasn’t been released, has reportedly been with the department for more than ten years; he’s been placed on administrative leave, which is standard protocol. “The subject did not comply with the commands that the officer was giving and instead charged the officer,” Assistant Chief Brian Manley of the Austin Police Department told Fox. “The officer gives repeated commands to stop, but the subject did not comply. The incident then goes off the frame, but you can hear continued commands from the officers. Then ultimately you can hear shots being fired.”
Austin’s NAACP president, Nelson Linder, said he doesn’t understand why deadly force was used instead of, say, a Taser. “I don’t see how a young man who’s naked, and not hurting anybody, winds up being dead,” he said. “Those things require constraint and understanding as opposed to deadly force.”
Myneeka Holloway, who lives nearby, said she first heard about the victim on the neighborhood’s Facebook page and had planned to check on him. “I decided after I took my shower I was going to go out to make sure everything [was] okay, because he was black,” she said. “I feel like I shouldn’t have taken a shower.” The APD will investigate the shooting, and Monday evening the APD chief of staff said it was “too early to tell” whether the suspect had been armed. It seems doubtful.
