The Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office released body camera footage Wednesday from the Asia Bennett shooting, more than two weeks after one of its officers killed the 22 year old outside her own home on a domestic violence call. Civil rights attorney Ben Crump and Bennett’s family will hold a news conference Thursday at noon at Southside Church of God in Christ on Emerson Street to respond to what the video shows. They are already calling the footage horrific and the shooting unjustified.
Video:
Crump’s statement after seeing the video goes further than anything the family has said publicly to this point. He says Bennett was nowhere near the officers, that the officer who fired had distance between them, that she had time, and that she had every option a trained officer is supposed to reach for before the gun. In his words, she “reached for the gun anyway.”That directly contradicts what the sheriff’s office told the public the morning after the shooting.
Asia Bennett was 22 years old and weighed 110 pounds. She was a certified lash technician working toward a career as an ultrasound technician. Her family says she was trying to get out of an abusive relationship when she died.
Officers were called to a house on Westdale Drive in the Arlington neighborhood around 10:45 p.m. on August 11 for a report of a battery with injuries. According to JSO, Bennett’s boyfriend, Joshua Smith, walked up to the first officer on scene and told her Bennett was inside with a knife. The department says Bennett came outside holding several items, dropped some of them when ordered to, and kept hold of a large kitchen knife. JSO says she moved toward the officer, identified as 26 year old Erin Gaitten, who fired once. The agency says Bennett fell but did not let go of the knife, then tried to get up and move toward Gaitten again, prompting a second shot. A backup officer arrived after both shots were fired. Bennett died at the hospital.
Before the video came out, Crump said witnesses at the scene heard the two shots fired back to back, with no gap long enough for Bennett to fall, stand up, and charge an officer in between. Witnesses also told the family they heard her calling out for help when police pulled up. Now the family says the footage backs them up.
Five other people were inside the house that night. Smith was treated for minor injuries and was not arrested. JSO listed him as the victim in the incident report.
Within hours of the shooting, the sheriff’s office stood at a podium and brought up an arrest from four months earlier. Bennett had been arrested in April on charges of felony domestic battery by strangulation, false imprisonment, and resisting an officer without violence, all stemming from an incident with Smith. What JSO did not say at that press conference is that an assistant state attorney in the office’s own Special Victims Unit reviewed the evidence and declined to prosecute her, filing that notice on May 11. A court order was entered shortly after barring Smith from contacting Bennett or coming near her. Smith was convicted last year of battering her.
Bennett’s mother, Crissy Duncan, got a call from the State Attorney’s Office just before 4 a.m. the morning after her daughter died. She said the person on the phone asked if she knew an Asia Bennett. She answered that she was her mother and asked what her daughter had done. She was told her daughter was dead.
At an earlier press conference on August 20, Crump laid out the family’s position before anyone had seen a frame of video. Bennett was the one being battered, he said, and a domestic violence call should have ended with officers protecting her. Chance Lynch, the lead attorney on the case, told reporters the family refuses to let the story be told by the agency that ended her life. Bennett’s uncle, Anthony Gerhold, said his niece will never get the comeback story most people get.
The family had asked JSO to release the video before Bennett’s funeral, which was held Monday. That did not happen. The footage came out two days later.
This was the thirteenth officer involved shooting for the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office this year. The State Attorney’s Office is running an independent investigation into the Asia Bennett shooting, and a JSO use of force review is expected once that concludes.
