Police say a 27-second camera video of Dolal Bayle Idd’s murder in Minneapolis shows that Idd shot the police first when police tried to arrest him with patrol cars in a parking lot, but his family and protesters continue to demand answers about what happened.
Idd, a 23-year-old black man, was shot several times while in his car in the parking lot of a gas station on Wednesday night. In Minneapolis, where George Floyd was killed by police in an incident that sparked massive protests and reignited a national movement against police violence, protesters took to the streets for two consecutive nights asking what led to the deadly shooting.
The Hennepin County coroner identified the man as Idd, who they said died of several gunshot wounds.
The short camera video released by Minneapolis police on Thursday shows police officers aiming their guns at a white car.
Officers are heard shouting, “Hands up! Hands up!” while the driver tries to maneuver the car in the snow-covered parking lot. Two patrol cars with flashing lights block the front of the white car, and when the driver tries to back up, a third patrol car corners the vehicle.
“Cum!” one of the policemen is heard screaming after the driver’s window appears to break. The policemen then fire several times at the white car.
Police said a woman was also in the car at the time, but was not injured in the shooting.
It is difficult to determine what happened based on the video from the body’s camera, but Minneapolis police chief Medaria Arradondo said he appears to show Idd shooting the police first.
“When I see the video that everyone is watching, and certainly the slowest real-time version, it looks like the individual inside the vehicle shoots the police first,” he told reporters shortly after the video was released.
The footage from the body’s camera was released just 24 hours after the deadly shooting, a rather quick response from a city still recovering from Floyd’s death on May 25, after a Minneapolis police officer crushed Floyd’s neck with his knee. .
Idd’s death was the first police death in the city since Floyd’s death.
City officials pledged transparency in addressing Wednesday’s deadly shooting, recognizing the lasting impact of Floyd’s death.
“We know that a life has been interrupted tonight and that trust between communities of color and security forces is fragile,” Mayor Jacob Frey said in a Facebook post. “Rebuilding that trust will depend on full transparency.”
Police said that no other videos will be released at the moment and that the shooting is being investigated by the Minnesota Criminal Seizure Department.
Authorities did not say what prompted the police to stop Idd, but that police involved in search warrants and drug investigations tried to pull the driver into the parking lot.
The Star Tribune reported that Idd was convicted in 2019 for carrying a gun in a public place and that Idd had fired the gun in his parents’ basement in Eden Prairie. The gun had been stolen from North Dakota and Idd was banned from carrying a firearm.
Shortly after the shooting, Idd’s father, Bayle Adod Gelle, said police officers from the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office knocked on his door and searched his home while he and his wife had their hands tied with rope.
He told the Sahan Journal, a nonprofit newsroom reporting on immigrants and refugees in Minnesota, that deputies kept the family, including three children aged 4, 7 and 9, at gunpoint while searching the house.
“I was very scared,” he told the Sahan Journal. “I thought they were going to kill us.”
Gelle, who moved from Somalia to the United States in 1997, did not immediately respond to requests for comment from BuzzFeed News.
After a two-hour search, Gelle said the police did not collect evidence from the house and said her son had been killed.
In a statement, the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Department said deputies “acted professionally and politely and followed the procedure while executing the search warrant,” which includes handcuffing adults.
The search was conducted to assist the Minnesota Criminal Seizure Department, said Sheriff David Hutchinson.
The deadly shooting sparked peaceful protests in the city for two consecutive nights. Another rally was expected on Sunday night.
“We are angry now,” said Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, in one of the protests. “We are frustrated now because we said, ‘No’, after George Floyd was killed, but it didn’t take long for another body to fall.”