The Dallas Police in the United States on Monday said they had released wrong information about the 15-year-old boy who they had fatally shot outside a high school house party in a suburb on Saturday night, reported CNN.
The police had earlier claimed they opened fire at Jordan Edwards because he was driving a car “aggressively” towards the police officer. But, Balch Springs Police Chief Jonathan Haber told reporters on Monday that he had “misspoken” earlier. He revealed that body camera footage from the incident actually showed the car was driving forward, away from the officers.
“I take responsibility for that,” Haber said. “The officer’s behavior did not meet our core values.”
Edwards later succumbed to the injury sustained from a bullet wound to his head. The Mesquite High School student-athlete was trying to leave a party on Saturday night, after the police had been alerted about under-age drinking. His death has been ruled a homicide.
The police officer who killed him, whose name has not been released, has been put on administrative leave and a criminal investigation into the incident is under way. However, the officer has not been arrested or charged yet.
Edwards’ family lawyer said three shots were fired into the car. “There were no weapons involved; there was no aggressive behavior; they were not suspects. The lone motive they had for the murder was that the vehicle was being used as a weapon, and now that is no longer there,” Lee Merritt told reporters on Monday. “We are declaring war on bad policing, America throughout the country must figure out a way to police its citizens without killing them.”
He also said the police had taken Edwards’ brother and three of his friends who were at the party into custody. He pointed out that they were neither arrested nor charged, but interviewed as witnesses to the incident.
Relations between the black community and police forces in the United States have been rapidly deteriorating over allegations of racial bias by investigating officers and several incidents of police shootings. In September 2016, a civilian was killed in Charlotte, North Carolina, amid protests that followed the police’s fatal shooting of a black man.
In July 2016, five officers were killed and six were wounded in Dallas after a protest rally had turned violent. The rally had been held after two black men were shot dead by the police in Minnesota and Louisiana. The deaths at the march were believed to be the single largest attack on law enforcement authorities in the US. The president at the time, Barack Obama had then emphasised on the need for such prejudices to be “rooted out”.
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