Cleveland Heights police have released two body camera videos from the Aug. 29 fatal shooting of 18-year-old Christian Thomas by city police officers.
The two videos released Tuesday include nearly 40 minutes of footage. They do not show the shooting.
The videos are from the bodycams of two officers standing on the other side of a house in the 1300 block of Yellowstone Road when Thomas was shot and include their perspectives of the moments before the shooting, the sound of the shots and video of the officers running toward the sound of gunfire.
When two officers arrived at the scene on that Thursday night, they are met by two women who said they are Thomas’s sisters and were in the house when a fight between Thomas and his father started, the video shows.
One described hearing a gunshot and seeing Thomas holding a firearm before she left the house.
The officers approach the house and their body cameras pick up the sound of shouting inside the home. Eventually, they convince the father to exit the house, but Thomas stays inside.
His father can be heard telling the officers not to kill his son.
After a few minutes, there’s a loud commotion and several gunshots are heard off-camera. When the officers run around the side of the house, they find Thomas lying on his stomach, not moving, with blood pooling around him.
It’s unclear how many officers were directly involved in the shooting from the footage, though Cleveland Heights Police said during a press conference the day after the incident that three officers were involved.
After they turned Thomas onto his back, the footage shows what appears to be multiple gunshot wounds to his chest. An officer administers CPR for a minute or two, while Thomas’s father can be heard crying in the background before the body camera footage ends.
The attorney for Thomas’s family, Stanley Jackson, called on the city to release more information during a press conference on Tuesday.
“We've demanded, along with other organizations that are interested, demanded for the release of all the bodycam footage,” Jackson said, adding the family does not know the names of the officers who killed Thomas. “We've demanded for the release of all the officers who were involved and reports. It's been two weeks. We have not received that.”
The two videos released Tuesday are a partial response to records requests and additional footage is under review, according to the city, which also held a press conference regarding the shooting Tuesday.
The president of the Cleveland branch of the NAACP said her organization will also file public records requests for information on the Aug. 29 incident.
“We are asking for reports to be released and shared not only with the family but with the investigators,” Griffin-Green said. “We are hoping that this will be a fair and transparent process, but it is not starting off that way.”
Cleveland Heights Police Chief Christopher Britton said he did not see a gun in Thomas’s hand when the shooting occurred in the footage he reviewed, during a press conference the day after the incident.
Ohio’s Bureau of Criminal Investigations is handling the criminal investigation into the shooting.
