Video released in police shooting of teen
CHICAGO — Video of Adam Toledo’s fatal shooting by a Chicago police officer was released to the public Thursday afternoon, more than two weeks after the 13-year-old was killed following a foot chase in a Little Village alley, igniting anger in the neighborhood and leaving the city on edge.
The materials were published on the website of the Civilian Office of Police Accountability shortly after 2:30 p.m. Central time.
They included images from officers’ body-worn cameras, along with thirdparty video, police radio recordings and police reports.
The video from the bodyworn camera of the officer who fires the shot captures the instant Toledo was struck, moments after the officer begins chasing the teen down the alley.
In that body camera video of the shooting officer — identified in police reports provided by COPA as Ogden District tactical unit Officer Eric Stillman — he can be seen pulling up in the alley in his police vehicle, getting out and running south.
The officer, Stillman, can be heard to shout, “Show me your (expletive) hands!” followed by “Drop it!” with a flickering flashlight on Toledo as he starts to turn around.
The teen can be seen stopping near an opening in a fence as he turns and he appears to start lifting his hands. As a shot is heard, the teen appears to have his hands apart, above his waist, approaching shoulder level.
On a frame-by-frame viewing, a pistol-shaped object appears to be visible in Toledo’s right hand behind his back as he pauses near the opening in the fence and turns his head toward the officer. On the grainy and shaky video, his hands appear to be empty at the moment the officer shoots him.
Later in the video, an officer can be seen shining a flashlight onto a pistol behind the fence where Toledo had been standing.
In a view from a camera across a nearby parking lot, aimed at the alley from behind that fence, the teen can be seen running down the alley from a distance. As he can be seen stopping at the gap where he was eventually shot, his right arm can be seen moving behind the fence, making an underhanded throwing motion toward the area where the gun is later recovered, just before he turns back toward the officer and slumps to the ground.
“Shots fired! Shots fired! Get an ambulance over here now!” Stillman, the officer who fired the shot, can be heard to say in the moments after firing, rushing to Toledo.
“Look at me. Look at me. You all right?” the cop says, standing over the teen.
“Where are you shot?” the cop says before turning Toledo over onto his back. Blood can be seen on the motionless Toledo’s sweatshirt and nose as officers are heard calling for an ambulance and a medical kit.
A police radio crackling in the background, Stillman, the shooting officer, can be seen attempting repeated chest compressions on Toledo before another officer on scene took over. A few others also crowded around the teen.
“Come on, big guy,” one officer can be heard to say.
The attorney for the family said in their view, the video shows that at the moment Adam was shot, he did not have a gun in his hand.
“Adam, during his last second of life, did not have a gun in his hand,” said Adeena Weiss Ortiz, standing outside her office in La Grange Park. “The officer screamed at him, ‘Show me your hands.’ Adam complied, turned around. His hands were empty when he was shot in the chest, at the hands of the officer.”
When asked if Toledo had a gun at any moment in the alley, she said that the video is not clear — even in slow motion — and needs to be “forensically analyzed, enhanced, zoomed in.” But she stressed during the news conference that at the moment Toledo is shot, there is no gun.