Video: Police fire 9 times, killing stopped motorist

McLEAN, Va. — A dashboard video released Wednesday shows national park police in Virginia firing their weapons up to nine times at a car they had stopped after a four-minute, stop-and-go chase, killing an apparently unarmed motorist.

Lawyers for the family of the dead motorist, 25-year-old Bijan Ghaisar, said the video provides clear evidence police overreacted.

“No one was even close to being in harm’s way until a pair of U.S. Park Police officers repeatedly shot Bijan at close range as he sat, unarmed, in his Jeep on a residential street,” lawyers for Ghaisar’s family said in a statement Wednesday after the video was made public.

Ghaisar, of McLean, died after the Nov. 17 chase, in which he was shot by U.S. Park Police. Authorities said Ghaisar fled after being involved in a crash on the George Washington Parkway. The FBI is now investigating the shooting.

Fairfax County Police Chief Edwin Roessler said Wednesday he released the video in an effort at transparency.

The four-minute nighttime video shows a chase beginning on the parkway a few miles south of the nation’s capital, then turning into a residential neighborhood. It shows the car driven by Ghaisar stopping twice during the chase, and officers approaching the car with guns drawn. In both cases, Ghaisar drives off.

At the third and final stop, officers with guns drawn approach the car at the driver side door. When the car starts to move again, five gunshots are heard. The car starts to drift into a ditch, and two more sets of two gunshots are heard.

“The video does not provide all the answers,” Roessler said in a statement Wednesday accompanying the video’s release.