AUTOPSY RAISES ISSUES IN POLICE KILLING
Independent exam finds man in San Bernardino was shot 7 times from behind.
Preliminary findings from an independent autopsy suggest that a 23-year-old man killed by police in San Bernardino last month was shot seven times from behind.
Robert Adams was shot to death by police on the evening of July 16 after a brief confrontation in a parking lot in the city of San Bernardino.
Videos from a security camera and a police officer’s body camera show Adams starting to approach an unmarked police car, then turning and running as officers exit their car with guns drawn. Adams runs between two cars parked against a building before at least one officer opens fire.
The autopsy diagram indicates Adams suffered a bullet wound in his back and wounds to his arm, thigh and ankle. None of the bullets had a front-to-back trajectory, meaning he was shot from behind, said civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump, who is representing the victim’s family.
“There was no reason for them to shoot this Black man running away from them,” Crump said at a televised news conference Friday.
San Bernardino Police Chief Darren Goodman said last month in a video statement that two uniformed police officers in an unmarked car went to the parking lot behind several West Highland Avenue businesses after hearing from “a citizen informant” that a Black man there was armed with a handgun.
“Why would [they] show up with undercover police officers?” Crump said Friday. “Why wouldn’t [they] show up with an identifiable, marked police vehicle?”
Police body camera and
security videos released by the department show Adams reaching into his waistband and holding a black object in his right hand as the unmarked police car pulls into the parking lot.
Adams’ mother has said her son was on the phone with her and holding his cellphone when police arrived.
Goodman said that Adams had a gun in his right hand and that officers recovered a loaded 9-millimeter handgun from the scene.
The security camera footage shows Adams slowly walking toward the police officers’ gray sedan, and then the officers getting out of the car and pointing their guns at him.
The officers “gave Adams verbal commands” as they got out of the car, Goodman said. Audio of the first 30 seconds of the interaction was not recorded by police body cameras, and the nearby security camera did not record any audio.
The videos show Adams turning and running toward two nearby cars in the parking lot. As he runs, he looks back toward the officers over his left shoulder, still holding what police say was a gun in his right hand.
The officers thought Adams “intended to use the vehicle as cover to shoot at them,” Goodman said, because the cars were backed against a wall and he had nowhere else to go.
Footage from one police body camera shows the officer firing at Adams, who died at a local hospital that night.
“I am in pain,” Tamika King, Adams’ mother, said on Friday.
“I won’t see my son walk through that door no more,” she continued. “I won’t see his beautiful smile. I won’t have his love and loyalty that he had for his family no more.”
His family held a funeral for Adams on Saturday morning at Ecclesia Christian Fellowship church in San Bernardino.