New Video May Show Events Leading Up to Snell Shooting
The video was released on the LAPD's YouTube page.
— -- The Los Angeles Police Department released surveillance video today that may show the events that led to the fatal police shooting of 18-year-old Carnell "CJ" Snell Jr. on Saturday.
The footage, posted to the department's YouTube channel, shows a young black man in a blue hoodie running in front of a line of parked cars. He draws a handgun from under the waistband of his gray sweatpants, stops behind a blue SUV and peeks out at something unseen. He then puts the gun back under his waistband and runs in the opposite direction.
The young man accelerates, turns right and disappears from view just as an officer appears to chase him.
The shooting was not captured on video, and it is not clear whether the man in the video is Snell. The surveillance footage was taken by a local business, police said.
The LAPD told Los Angeles ABC station KABC that no more footage would be released.
The footage has done little to quiet protests in Los Angeles over Snell's death. At a commission meeting for the LAPD today, Black Lives Matter protesters chanted and called for Police Chief Charlie Beck to be fired.
Protests have taken place in each of the four days since Snell's shooting.
The incident began after an officer spotted a car with "paper plates" and tried to stop it at around 1 p.m. Saturday in South Los Angeles, police said. The driver of the vehicle disobeyed a command to stop, and officers pursued the vehicle, police said.
Police reported the vehicle as possibly stolen.
The car stopped, and two men fled it in separate directions, police said in a press release. The officers chased one of the men and shot him, they said. Paramedics declared him dead at the scene, according to the release. Family members have identified that man as Snell.
Only one man is clearly visible in the video released today.
Police said a handgun was recovered at the scene, but it is unknown whether that gun is the one that appears in the video.
Snell's mother, Monique Morgan, was so overcome with grief that she could barely stand upright as she spoke at a news conference on Saturday about her son's death. "My daughter got a phone call. It said that the police shot him," she said.
She complained that police have failed to give her information and that she wasn't allowed to see his body. The LAPD did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding her allegation.
The daughter Morgan mentioned is likely 17-year-old Trenell Snell, who was outside with friends when she saw her older brother running from police, according to The Los Angeles Times.
She started running too, according to the paper, and then heard gunfire. She dropped to the ground, she said, and when she got up, she saw her brother in handcuffs.
"At the end of the day, the cops came and shot my brother," she told the Times.
Family members say he was shot five times, but police have not commented on that number, according to KABC. The Associated Press reported that a black gate on the property where the shooting occurred was riddled with six bullet holes.
The outrage over the killing — KABC captured video showing protesters coming face to face with police in arguments after the shooting — serves as a reminder of the tense relationship the LAPD has had with the city's black population for decades.
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