Dashcam footage released by The Associated Press on Monday shows the events leading up to a Georgia state trooper fatally shooting a driver in 2020 that began with a vehicle pursuit over a broken taillight, according to the AP.
Trooper Jacob Thompson, who is white, shot Julian Lewis, a 60-year-old Black man, after forcing Lewis’ car off a rural dirt road in Screven County, Georgia, during the car chase in which Lewis appears to refuse to pull over for the officer in the video for several minutes.
“There was just a point where the officer no longer wanted to pursue my father,” Brook Bacon, Lewis’ son, told ABC News in an interview after seeing the footage. “Almost less than a blink of an eye, he was out of his vehicle and fired a shot. So, there wasn’t any time for dialogue between them whatsoever.”
After the trooper executed a precision immobilization technique (PIT) the night of Aug. 7, 2020, a move to force a fleeing vehicle to abruptly stall or stop, the trooper can be heard yelling orders, and a single shot can be heard off-camera within a couple seconds of the officer exiting his vehicle, a review of the video by ABC News reveals.
The video does not include any visuals of the actual shooting, which happened outside camera range.
“The U.S. Attorney’s Office closed this inquiry without bringing federal charges after a thorough investigation of the facts and circumstances surrounding the incident,” according to a statement obtained by ABC News from the federal prosecutor’s office in the Southern District of Georgia.
