Mall releases footage of shooting
Blurry image doesn’t shed much light on Salaythis Melvin’s death
The Florida Mall late Monday released video from a security camera that was recording when Orange County Deputy James Montiel fatally shot Salaythis Melvin in the back weeks ago, but the footage is too blurry and the camera too far away to shed light on what happened.
Attorney Brad Laurent, part of a team representing Melvin’s family, said he was told the security camera positioned right above where Montiel killed Melvin on Aug. 7 was not working at the time of the shooting, and the only camera that captured it
was from a parking lot away.
The mall shared the almost 12-minute-long video with Laurent Monday night after the attorney fought for its release.
About a minute into the video four vehicles, spread out over a few seconds, enter the parking and head directly toward an entrance to the Dick’s Sporting
Goods, where Melvin was emerging with a friend, but the building cuts off the camera’s view. About two minutes later more law enforcement vehicles start arriving to the same area.
The video quality is too poor to make out people or their actions. There also is no sound.
“It was the last hope as far as
the footage, but we’re still comfortable with [our position on the shooting],” Laurent said Monday evening. “[Melvin] never knew they were law enforcement officers. That’s our same position, it hasn’t changed, it’s not going to change.”
“The shooting is questionable, our position is the shooting was bad,” Laurent said.
Montiel fatally shot Melvin, 22, in the back as he ran from the deputy, who was not in full uniform.
OCSO officials have said that Melvin was holding a handgun in his waistband when he ran from the mostly plain-clothed deputies who converged on him and his friends as they left Dick’s. At one point, deputies said, Melvin looked back at Montiel as he ran, prompting the deputy to think Melvin was going to shoot, so Montiel fired at him.
Laurent said mall officials told him they fixed the security camera positioned above where Melvin was shot a few days after the shooting.
Laurent has been working for weeks to secure the mall’s security camera video, which the Sheriff’s Office has refused to release, claiming they didn’t have the legal authority under a public records exemption that protects the layout of security systems.
OCSO has released multiple batches of body-worn camera footage from the shooting, but none clearly showed what led up to it. The agency had also denied a public records request for the security video from the Orlando Sentinel, citing the same exemption to Florida’s public record laws.
The head of the Florida Mall’s security released the footage to Laurent Monday, which he shared with the Sentinel.
Last week, the Dick’s Sporting Goods store at the Florida Mall released a video to Melvin’s attorneys from one of its indoor security cameras, which showed Melvin and a friend walking out of the store and then some of the commotion that soon followed outside. Laurent said he hadn’t heard from Florida Mall attorneys until Dick’s released its video
Melvin’s killing has sparked outrage across the community, with activists leading demonstrations at the mall calling for full transparency from OCSO and accountability for Montiel. Laurent said his team plans on filing a wrongful death lawsuit against the agency.
The almost one-minute clip from Dick’s is filmed from a camera inside its store facing the front doors. Though the video is not very clear and doesn’t show any portion of the actual shooting, Laurent argued it makes clear how quickly everything happened, which increases the possibility Melvin didn’t realize the armed men approaching them in plain clothes were law enforcement officers.
In the clip, Melvin and one friend walk out the store and into the parking lot, veering right. About twenty second later, three people run back toward the store, crossing to the left side of the front doors. At the same time, a plainclothed deputy walks out from the aisles in Dick’s, pointing a gun toward one of Melvin’s friends, who’d run back toward the doors and stopped.
It appears Melvin kept running parallel to the store, before leaving the left side of the frame.
Then, two vehicles quickly drive past the store in the same direction Melvin ran, before a Dick’s employee who’d been near the entrance throws their hands up to their head, appearing to be in distress. Laurent believes that is the moment the gunfire rang out.
Only thirty seconds had passed from when the duo left the store.
Laurent said the video contradict’s the Sheriff’s Office’s claim that Melvin fled while his friends immediately surrendered and obeyed deputies’ commands.
“They all took off running because they were scared, they didn’t know what was going on,” the attorney argued.
Montiel and the other deputies were trying to arrest one of Melvin’s friends on a warrant, officials have said. Mina said in a recent interview that everyone else “followed the instructions of law enforcement,” but Melvin ran.
Melvin later died in a hospital. Deputies said the gun he had was stolen and loaded.
Laurent said his team also spoke with Vanshawn Sands, who deputies were targeting for arrest before Melvin was killed. Sands, described by law enforcement as a high-ranking gang member, was wanted for possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, a charge that stemmed from a shootout in July that left another man dead.
“He said he had no clue that they were police, he thought it was somebody coming after them,” Laurent said.
The only body camera footage that showed the seconds before Melvin was shot came from a deputy driving toward Melvin, still about 50 yards away from him, captured through the windshield. Melvin was shown running through the parking lot, with no one immediately behind him for at least 25 feet, when he fell to the ground midstride.
There was no video from Montiel’s perspective, because Montiel, a member of the agency’s Juvenile Arrest and Monitor unit, was never outfitted with a body-worn camera, OCSO officials have said.