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Video of a police officer fatally shooting a teenager as he ran away has been released two years after the shooting occurred.
Isiah Murrietta-Golding was 16 when he was shot in the back of the head by a police officer in April 2017.
Murrietta-Golding was unarmed at the time of the shooting, said Stuart Chandler, the attorney for his father.
Surveillance footage shows the teen climbing a fence and then taking about eight steps before being shot by one of two officers seen in the video.
Body camera footage appears to show the other officer on the scene say “good shot” to the officer who fired the weapon.
The footage was released this week as the teen’s family pursues litigation.
The Fresno police chief released a statement in the video release’s wake noting that the incident and the officer involved were subject to three investigations, all of which concluded that the officer’s use of lethal force was justified.
Chief of police Andrew Hall urged the public “not to rush to judgement.”
“The video released yesterday is an officer involved shooting that occurred over two years ago. The use of lethal force in this case occurred while officers were investigating a homicide. The 16-year-old in this case was involved in the homicide with his brother and the brother was later arrested and pled guilty,” Hall said in a statement released Thursday.
“The video represents a different vantage point and was not what the pursuing officers could see. The 16-year-old was also known to carry firearms and had jumped a fence into a child daycare center,” Hall said in his statement.
Chandler takes issue with the defense that the officer felt his life was in danger, which could legally serve as justification for the use of lethal force by a police officer.
“The law says that there has to be an immediate threat of death or serious bodily injury which clearly there wasn’t. This young man was trying to run away. And you can be as critical as you want about how you shouldn’t do that, but that doesn’t give the police the right to use lethal force,” Chandler told ABC affiliate KABC.
