Police officers in Akron, Ohio, killed 25-year-old Jayland Walker after shooting him at least 60 times as he was running away following a routine traffic stop, The Akron Beacon Journal reported Sunday.
Attorney Bobby DiCello, who saw body camera video of the incident, told the Beacon Journal that he’s worried about how people will react to the “brutal” police body-camera video, which shows the 25-year-old Black man running away as officers unleashed a hail of more than 90 bullets at Walker in what he described as an “unbelievable scene.”
Akron Police Department released a statement on Facebook, saying officers “attempted to stop 25-year-old Jayland Walker at 12:30 a.m. for a traffic violation and conducted a pursuit after he refused to stop, the police department said in a Tuesday statement on its Facebook page. After a few minutes, Walker slowed down and left his car while it was still in motion and ran away from police.”
The statement says that Walker ran into a parking lot and that “actions by the suspect caused the officers to perceive he posed a deadly threat to them.” Officers then opened fire at Walker as he was fleeing with nothing in his hands, killing him.
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DiCello said he was sharing details of the video before its Sunday release by Akron police to help the community prepare for what it will show, stressing Walker’s family wants peace to be maintained.
“We’re all bracing for the community’s response and the one message that we have is the family does not need any more violence,” he said. “… It needs peace, and it wants peace, and it wants the process to play out.”
DiCello told the news outlet that in the body cam video, an officer calls out the speed at which Walker is traveling, as high as 50 miles per hour, before he slows down to 15 miles per hour and then runs “as if he were a football player running for the end zone.”
He said officers ran after him and shot him “within seconds.” He compared the sound to “a whole brick of fireworks going off,” adding that the number of shots fired topped 90 and that an investigation indicates Walker received 60 to 80 wounds.
“I think the firing happens in about six seconds,” DiCello said. “It was an unbelievable amount of gunfire.”
DiCello told the outlet the video is “very, very disturbing” and unlike anything else he has seen before.
Watch the video below:
⚠️Warning: GRAPHIC
Akron Police just released the body camera footage of the killing of Jayland Walker.
Jayland was unarmed and running away when police opened fire, firing 90 shots, hitting him 60.
The Department of Justice needs to step in to investigate immediately. pic.twitter.com/owMmoSwFCi
— Nina Turner (@ninaturner) July 3, 2022
