Video Shows Police Shoot Unarmed, Fleeing Teen

He was 'posing no threat to anybody,' lawyer says
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 25, 2019 4:10 AM CDT

After 16-year-old Isiah Murrietta-Golding was shot in the back of the head by a Fresno police officer as he ran away from officers in April 2017, police insisted the shooting was justified. A lawyer for the teen's father says newly released video tells a different story. The video, released as part of the father's wrongful-death lawsuit against the city and several police officers, shows the teen climb a fence and start running through a small yard, trying to hold up his pants, before an officer on the other side of the fence shoots him. In body camera video, somebody can be heard saying "good shot," CNN reports. Murrietta-Golding, who was unarmed, died in a hospital three days later. Police said the officer who fired saw the teen reaching into his waistband and had reason to fear for his life.

"A picture is worth a thousand words, and this video is worth a million words," attorney Stuart Chandler tells the Washington Post. “It’s clear this shooting was not justified. He was running away, holding up his pants, posing no threat to anybody." Fresno Police Chief Andy Hall said Thursday that the teen ran away after police investigating a homicide stopped a vehicle he was in. Murrietta-Golding "was involved in the homicide with his brother and the brother was later arrested and plead guilty," the chief said. Chandler tells the Fresno Bee that the chief shouldn't claim the shooting was justified because the teen was "a possible suspect" since "it’s not the place of the police to make that determination and without a trial." "You can’t do that in America," he says. (More California stories.)

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