Body camera footage has revealed that Columbus, Ohio police officers stood by for several minutes before offering first aid to Andre’ hill after being shot and killed.
Minutes following the shooting were spent scouring the driveway for shell casings, putting up crime scene tape, and blocking off the street, instead of helping Hill, who was shot inside his friend’s garage, ABC News reports.
Evidence revealed at one point, two of the Columbus officers rolled the victim over to put him in handcuffs and then leaving him again. The footage released on Thursday gives a grim rundown of what Hill endured in the last minutes of his life; the 47-year old Black man was barely moving as he groaned and bled while lying on the garage floor.
Nearly ten minutes went by before a supervisor arrived on the scene and asked, “Anybody doing anything for him?”
An officer started to do chest pumps on Hill, who was pronounced dead at the hospital.
Officer Adam Coy, who is white, was fired for incompetence and gross neglect of duty for the fatal shooting that took place three days before Christmas. Now the officers who also stood by and failed to give Hill medical attention are under investigation for failing to follow the department’s policy.
Thomas Quinlan, police chief of the department, has since released a statement over the video’s horrific lack of compassion.
“As a police chief, and just as a human being, the events of the last week have left me shaken, and heartbroken for the family of Andre’ Hill,” Quinlan said in a statement. “Every man and woman who wears this badge should feel the same.”
The family of Hill slammed the officers and their ill-treatment towards Hill.
“The way that my brother was treated, to me, it’s like an animal,” said Hill’s sister, Michelle Hairston. “He was preyed upon. He wasn’t given any kind of chances.”
“Where is the humanity?” said Benjamin Crump, a civil rights and trial attorney representing the family and who, with family members, called on Coy to be arrested and charged. “This is a couple days before Christmas. Why is nobody being Christ-like?”
Hill was shot by former officer Coy, a member of the force for 17 years. Hill was in the garage the day police arrived and emerged, holding a cellphone in his left hand. However, it was reported that his right hand was not visible.
Another officer on the scene said she didn’t feel threatened and did not see a gun, yet, Coy reported differently.
Coy can be heard on the bodycam footage telling another officer, “I’ve got to figure out what I missed.”
“We’ll take care of that, I promise you,” Officer Jared Barsotti responded as the two were walking away from the home.
The whole incident was a response to a non-emergency call coming from a neighbor. The woman inside the home of the incident told the officers right after the shooting that Hill was bringing her money.
“He was bringing me Christmas money. He didn’t do anything,” she shouted.
What’s more disturbing is that five minutes after the shooting, an officer told another, “Let’s cuff him up. He’s still moving.”
“How can you sleep at night knowing that you did this, and left him there, and had the nerve to turn him over and handcuff him but not offer him any type of help?” Shawana Barnett, another sister of Hill, said during the news conference on Thursday.
Hill’s death comes two weeks after another Ohio officer in Franklin county shot 23-year-old Casey Goodson, Jr., who was also Black and outside his home.
“The deeper problem is the existence of a systemic culture within many police departments, as evidenced here in Columbus, where Black men are perceived as threats by the police,” a letter from twenty faith leaders across Columbus wrote. “The result is that Black communities always feel harassed and threatened.”
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