CHICAGO (AP) — The family of the 13-year-old boy who was fatally shot by a Chicago police officer last month will watch the video of the shooting next week, the family’s attorneys said Friday.
In a brief statement issued shortly after the funeral for Adam Toledo, attorneys Joel Hirschhorn and Adeena Weiss Ortiz did not say which day the family would watch the videos or detail what other materials might be made available to them in the March 29 police shooting.
It’s not clear what the video shows. The Chicago Police Department has said the boy had a handgun, and Mayor Lori Lightfoot — in demanding police find whoever supplied the weapon to the boy — has suggested that he was involved in street gangs. Among the questions that police have declined to answer is whether the boy fired the gun at the officer before he was shot or raised the weapon and pointed it at the officer.
The Civilian Office of Police Accountability, which investigates police shootings in Chicago, did not respond to calls for comment. The board has only said that the video would be made public after the family has had a chance to view it.
The video has been of intense interest in the city, particularly after the medical examiner’s office revealed the age of the person who was shot.
According to police, officers were dispatched to the Little Village neighborhood on the city’s West Side shortly before 3 a.m. after the department’s ShotSpotter technology detected the sound of gunshots. When police arrived, Toledo and a 21-year-old man ran away. While chasing the teen, there was an “armed confrontation” during which an officer shot the boy once in the chest, police said. A handgun was recovered and the 21-year-old man was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of resisting arrest, according to police.
Initially, the review board said it could not legally release the video because the person who was shot was a minor. But after calls for its release, including from Lightfoot and Police Superintendent David Brown, the board reversed course.
It has been several days since then. The family’s attorneys did not address the delay in the video’s release, but made a point of saying that, “The City of Chicago, the Chicago Police Department and the Civilian Office of Police Accountability have been very cooperative.
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