Thaddeus McCarroll Video: Watch Police Shoot And Kill Man Armed With Bible, Knife [Video]
The below video showing Thaddeus McCarroll getting shot has been released by the St. Louis County Police, with the body camera footage making it hard to tell exactly what’s happening in the video. An officer can be heard speaking loudly to Thaddeus, asking him what’s going on, and telling him that McCarroll’s mother is worried about him.
The video footage from the negotiator includes the officers trying to talk him down, but makes it hard to see that the police shot a rubber bullet first, which caused Thaddeus to charge towards St. Louis County police, who then killed him, reports NBC News.
The 23-year-old’s mother had called police for help in taking Thaddeus away from her home, and McCarroll allegedly spoke of taking a “journey” and talked about a “black revolution” prior to being killed. She had reached out to the Jennings Precinct of the police department on Friday evening at approximately 9:20 p.m. because of her son’s erratic behavior. The armed standoff occurred near the precinct on Riverwood Drive off of Jennings Station Road after Thaddeus barricaded himself in the house. That’s where he had access to the knives, and he held at least one of them when cops fatally shot him, reports the Root.
The video shows the suburban residential St. Louis neighborhood being rocked by a blast from a gun, as seen in the body camera footage, reports ABC News. McCarroll had locked his own mother out of the house and was also carrying a Bible along with the knife. Chief Jon Belmar reported the incident to the press, and the video displays the audio recordings of police trying to get Thaddeus to put down the knife and reason with them.
“Do me a favor and just drop the knife and walk over here…”
The rubber bullet fired — or “less lethal spherical” — was an attempt to get Thaddeus to drop the knife. However, police report that McCarroll got closer to them instead of dropping the blade as they intended.
As reported by the Inquisitr, when Officer Darren Wilson was expected to go free as the Ferguson grand jury deliberated, a state of emergency was declared. The release of this latest footage of a police shooting has caused the hashtag #ThaddeusMcCarroll to begin trending on Twitter, with various opinions about the body camera video cops have released.
RT @ShaunKing: Police were itching to shoot #ThaddeusMcCarroll :: Kept saying to each other "just tell me when" https://t.co/c8FP94YO6X
— atmosphere (@atmosphere) April 18, 2015
[Image via YouTube]
