Video shows trooper shooting 7 bullets at teen
A Connecticut State Police trooper held his gun steady late Wednesday afternoon as he fired seven times into a vehicle with a 19-year-old New Haven teen in the driver’s seat, body and dashboard camera footage of the deadly incident showed.
Trooper Brian North, a four-and-a-halfyear member of the state police force, had been one of the officers who pursued Mubarak Soulemane on Interstate 95 from the Bridgeport area into West Haven.
Body camera footage of the fatal policeinvolved shooting shows what happened in the moments before, during and after the deadly incident — but still leaves unanswered questions.
State police released the 1 hour, 33 minutes and 50 seconds of footage late Friday night. In Connecticut, dashboard and body camera footage must be released no more than 96 hours after a fatal police-involved shooting.
Dashboard camera footage for North and troopers Joshua Jackson and Ross Dalling showed the law enforcement officers racing behind a white Hyundai Sonata — reaching speeds up to 100 mph at times — across all lanes of travel and the left and right breakdown lanes on I-95 northbound for roughly 10 minutes.
Soulemane, in the Hyundai Sonata, weaved in and out of traffic, narrowly avoiding other vehicles on the highway. The troopers followed him, a distance away.
But once Soulemane took the off-ramp for Exit 43 onto Campbell Avenue, he crashed into a civilian car under an overpass. Troopers then boxed him in.
Body and dash camera footage shows the three troopers — as well as other unidentified officers — surrounding the vehicle with the teen still in the driver’s seat. North and Jackson had their guns drawn.
“Get out of the car,” Jackson shouted twice as he approached Soulemane in the vehicle, with his gun drawn.
Jackson then walked around to the right side of the vehicle, with his body camera capturing significant damage to the front end of the teen’s vehicle.
North then approached the driver’s-side window, his gun also drawn.
Jackson reaches for the front passenger door handle. It’s locked.
Another officer can be seen using his right fist to try to break the front passenger window before he grabs a baton and hit the window several times, shattering it.
Jackson’s body camera footage appears to show Soulemane moving in the car, seen through the broken window. Soulemane appears to have something in his hand, but the item is difficult to see.
The troopers had been warned earlier to use caution, since Norwalk police indicated that Soulemane had been armed with a knife.
Taser, then gunfire
“Jackson,” North shouted to his fellow trooper, “Taser.”
Jackson grabbed his Taser and fired it through the broken window. It’s unclear if the Taser hit Soulemane or just landed in the vehicle.
Then, North’s body camera footage shows he fired his gun seven times, shattering the driver’s window. It’s unclear what exactly prompted him to fire his gun.
“Shots fired,” North then relayed on the radio.
After he fired the shots, North shouted, “He’s got a knife” to the other officers. Then, he shouted to Soulemane, “Drop the knife. Drop the knife.”
Several seconds pass, and through one of the bullet holes in the window, Soulemane can be seen moving slightly.
North indicated to the other officers that the knife was “not in his hands. It’s on his lap.”
He then uses his gun to make a bigger hole in the glass that he shot through. North then reaches into the car.
“I got the knife,” he told the other officers as he can be seen on the body camera footage pulling it out of the window with his left hand. “It’s on the hood. Pull him out.”