A graphic video from a Florida deputy’s body camera and surveillance footage captured the tense fight between a man and a police officer before another officer fatally shot the suspected attacker.
A sheriff’s deputy shot and killed Pedro Pierre, 42, in Fort Lauderdale Wednesday after police responded to reports of a disturbance at an apartment complex, the Daily Mail reports.
The officer’s body cam footage shows the moment the man confronted the deputy walking into the Sunset Hills Condominium.
“Don’t point at me, man. Step back,” the deputy, who has not been identified, said as he entered the apartment.
“Step back for who?” Pierre responded.
“Step back,” the deputy said.
“For who? For you?” Pierre said.
“What’s his problem,” the deputy asked his colleague off-camera.
Moments later, the man began chasing the officer out of the apartment and the two moved their fight to the apartment courtyard.
The deputy attempted to use his taser on the man, but failed to subdue him.
“Back down, man,” the deputy yelled repeatedly as Pierre punched, kicked, and dragged him. “What is wrong with you? Stand down!”
The deputy tried to use his baton to defend himself and keep Pierre at bay when another deputy stepped in, armed with a gun.
“Get your hands up! Get down,” the second deputy yelled.
The deputy’s body camera showed Pierre continuing to ignore the officer’s orders to stop assaulting the deputy when he began to charge after the second deputy.
Suddenly, three shots rang out, and Pierre dropped to the ground in the parking lot of the apartment complex.
“Shots fired,” the deputy announced over his radio, shortly before back up arrived.
Broward Sheriff Scott Israel told CBS Miami Friday that decided to release the footage to the public to give an unbiased account of the incident and put to rest any speculation about the shooting.
“Unarmed assailants take guns away from police officers, and they are many police officers in the United States of America who tragically have died at the hands of their own weapons,” Israel said.
Pierre’s family, however, thinks the video does not tell the whole story about their loved one. Pierre’s sister, Guilaine Jean, said that her brother was a father of five, a one-time political candidate in Haiti, and an entrepreneur.
“This is not my brother,” Jean said. “He was not a violent person. He was a good guy.”
She added that her brother suffered from a host of physical and mental illnesses, and claims that police should not have used force if they considered his medical history.
“They didn’t have to kill him at all,” said his son, Ralph Fenelon. “They had tasers; they had other weapons. They didn’t have to shoot him.”