A suburban Dallas police chief acknowledged that an officer who fatally shot a black 15-year-old in a moving vehicle fired as the car was driving away – not as it reversed toward officers, as the department had previously asserted.
Balch Springs Police Chief Jonathan Haber told reporters Monday that police video contradicted his department’s original statement about the Saturday night shooting of Jordan Edwards. Edwards, a high school freshman, had gotten into a vehicle with four other teenagers to leave a house party as police were arriving to investigate an underage drinking complaint, according to his family’s attorney, Lee Merritt.
Police first said the vehicle backed up toward police at the scene “in an aggressive manner.” But Haber said Monday that police video shows the vehicle was instead “moving forward as the officers approached.”
Before Haber’s update, Merritt and the teen’s family held their own news conference, during which Merritt accused police of “offering facts that they believe paint a picture that would justify the unjustifiable.” He later told The Associated Press that Jordan’s shooting brings to mind the high-profile deaths of other black people after police encounters that have sparked outrage and protest in recent years, but that this case stood out for its “sheer recklessness.”
“This has happened far too often,” Merritt said. “We are tired of making the same rhetorical demands, of having the same hashtags.”