The Cleveland Heights Police Department has released hours of body camera footage from the August 29th shooting death of 18-year-old Christian Thomas by CHPD officers.
At about 10 p.m. that night, officers from Cleveland Heights were responding to a call about a fight between a father and son. A gun was involved, according to the 911 call, and at least one shot may have been fired inside the house. About 25 minutes later, 18-year-old Christian Thomas died after Cleveland Heights officers shot him multiple times.
Ideastream Host Josh Boose spoke to reporter Matt Richmond about what he's learned from the videos, 911 call recordings and other documents released so far about how this shooting unfolded.
Richmond: First, we have not seen the footage from the three officers who fired their weapons... that captures the actual shooting. In one of the videos that we do have, we see where Thomas likely came out of the house.
You know, there are some officers who were sort of posted there after the shooting, and it looks like he came out a screen on the back porch.
So... he kind of crashed through the screen. And that matches other videos that captured the audio of the shooting. You can hear a loud crashing sound right before the shots are fired.
Now, in this footage from after the incident, there is a gun lying on the ground on the side of the house right next to that broken screen. Police believe that handgun belonged to Thomas.
According to police reports, Thomas, after coming out through the screen, ran through the next-door neighbor's yard before he fell in that neighbor's driveway on the other side of the house.
Boose: So what about this missing footage capturing Thomas leaving the house — what he did when he was encountering officers not only outside, but officers opening fire? Do we expect to see that?
Richmond: I asked the city if they plan to release that footage and have not received a response. The family's attorney says they have also not seen that footage. The city says more videos are under review. And they described the... releases that they've done so far as partial.
But we don't know what else exists.
Boose: All right. What else did we learn then from all this footage that was released?
Richmond: Much of it is heartbreaking footage from Christian Thomas's father, Ferrel, you know, grappling with what had just happened. Remember the whole thing started with an argument between the father and his son.
And when officers first arrived, they convinced the father to come out [of the house]. And after his son was killed, [Ferrel Thomas] can be heard weeping and saying over and over that he should have never left his son.
And then the footage also captures a lot of the aftermath, and this is more than what you usually get in the public release of bodycam footage — the aftermath at the scene after a police shooting.
Boose: What stuck out to you about that part of the footage, Matt?
Richmond: So first was... the details of handing over the scene and the investigation to the Bureau of Criminal Investigation, or BCI, and how that actually works. We do know that the BCI was called quickly to take over the investigation. We don't know when the official turnover occurred.
We do know, from police reports and footage, the Cleveland Heights detectives spoke extensively to family members at the scene before BCI arrived. We know that a Cleveland Heights detective spoke to family members alongside a BCI investigator at 12:30 in the morning.
And we know Cleveland Heights investigators wrote the initial search warrant for the house after BCI arrived. Then we know that a second search warrant was written and then carried out by Cleveland Heights police after drugs were found in the house during the first search, and Cleveland Heights Police went into the house at 7:14 in the morning to seize drugs from the basement.
The family's attorney is... questioning these apparent interactions between Cleveland Heights police and BCI investigators.
Boose: BCI investigators are called in to remove the agency whose officers were involved in that shooting, right, and also to increase the faith in the... independence of the investigation.
Richmond: Right. And the family's attorney is questioning why CHPD officers are in the family home up until 7 in the morning and talking to family members while waiting for BCI to arrive.
I've reached out to Cleveland Heights police about when BCI took over, formally, but have not yet heard back.
And one other thing that we learned from police reports is that two Cleveland Heights Police Department officers fired at least 20 rounds in the front yard of the neighbor's house from an AR-15-style rifle. That's a high-powered weapon that was fired repeatedly in a residential neighborhood. Where those rounds ended up is not clear yet.
