Warning: Distressing footage
New, graphic footage of 37-year-old Alton Sterling being killed by police in front of a convenient store in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Tuesday morning has surfaced.
The new video – submitted by the store’s owner, Abduallah Muflahi – was submitted to the Daily Beast and shows the entire altercation of Sterling being pinned to the ground and then shot multiple times.
YouTubeThe original video, which has sparked protests throughout the nation, shows Sterling being tackled, then when footage pans away, gunshots can be heard. The officers can be heard shouting: “He’s got a gun! Gun!” and, “You fucking move, I swear to God.” Sterling appears to be saying: “Please!”
But Muflahi’s new footage shows a completely different angle of the altercation. The full, unedited video (not shown here due to its graphic nature) was published to the Daily Beast (you can watch it here) and shows what happened before, during, and after the killing of Sterling.
In the new video, a police officer can be seen removing an unknown object from Sterling’s pocket which is said to be a gun.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WD7JcNREVEE
But while officers say Sterling’s firearm represented an active threat, Muflahi’s video appears not to support that claim: it appears to have been in Sterling’s pocket and never reached his hand. Instead, the video shows Sterling pinned down, shot twice in the chest, and then as the clip pans away, he is shot four more times.
After mortally wounding him, one of the officers appears to reach into Sterling’s pocket to remove an object – but during a Wednesday press conference, police refused to comment on whether Sterling had a gun.
The footage ends with one of the officers yelling “Fuck! 10-4, 10-4… shots fired! Shots fired!”
YouTubeSterling was still alive, with the video capturing his left hand moving towards his head, over his gun shot wound to the chest. The video then cuts off.
The police officers, identified as Blane Salamoni and Howie Lake II, had reportedly gone to Muflahi’s store as a response to a call that someone was threatening customers with a gun, but Muflahi told the Daily Beast Sterling wasn’t the alleged threatener.
Muflahi says Sterling was selling CDs outside before police were called, and says the 37-year-old father was ‘a welcome presence at the store for years’.
YouTubeMulfahi, who is from Yemen and has owned the store since 2010, said:
I was just in shock. They shot him three times, and rolled off of him. Then they shot him three more times.
That’s his gun they are taking out of his pocket.
As soon as I finished the video, I put my phone in my pocket. I knew they would take it from me, if they knew I had it. They took my security camera videos. They told me they had a warrant, but didn’t show me one. So I kept this video for myself. Otherwise, what proof do I have?
YouTubeProtests broke out in Baton Rouge on Tuesday night after earlier video footage shot by another witness in a nearby car emerged online.
On Wednesday, the US Department of Justice said it would investigate the shooting following a request from local authorities.
His death marks the 114th known black man killed by police in the United States in 2016.
