A man wielding a knife outside a north St. Louis convenience store was shot dead on Tuesday by St. Louis city police officers, whose department then moved fast to release video and 911 tapes related to the incident.
The shooting came less than two weeks after 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot dead in nearby Ferguson, also by a police officer. The St. Louis shooting further inflamed protesters in a community already raw with anger over police aggression.
In a video released by police, shot on a witness' cellphone, the man, 25-year-old Kajieme Powell, can be seen pacing while he apparently waits for police officers to arrive outside the store.
Soon, they do, and within a minute Powell is dead on the street, shot 12 times by the two responding officers. Many of the shots were fired after Powell hit the sidewalk. He then lays there, occasionally moving, for another 30 seconds and doesn't appear to receive any aid from the police who fired the shots.
St. Louis Public Radio reported that Powell was suspected of stealing energy drinks and donuts from the store.
Witnesses later told local news organization River Front Times that Powell had mental health problems.
"Both officers fired at least five shots from their weapons," Robert Addison, a man who says he witnessed the killing, told the paper. "I thought it was excessive. Shooting him multiple times like that? He was going down from the one shot. They opened up on him."
The 911 calls:
Security footage from the store:
The eyewitness video:
(Warning: This video is graphic and shows Powell's death at the hands of the two officers.)
St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson said on Tuesday that Powell had been acting "erratically" and had lunged at the officers with a knife, yelling "kill me now" from a distance of approximately three to four feet. After the suspect refused to drop the knife, officers fired.
"Officer safety is the No. 1 issue," the police chief said, defending the shooting. "Every police officer that's out here has a right to defend themselves."
Today @SLMPD officers received a call for a subject who appeared agitated & was armed with a knife. Suspect yelled kill me now & approached.— Chief Sam Dotson (@ChiefSLMPD) August 19, 2014
The pace of information released in the Powell shooting is in stark contrast to the Michael Brown case, in which the slow trickle of information released by police sparked protests in Ferguson.
On Tuesday, protesters quickly gathered at the scene of the Powell shooting, chanting the same "hands up, don't shoot!" slogan from the Ferguson demonstrations.
"I don’t think any of us can deny that the tension not only in St. Louis but around the county and the world because of the activities in Ferguson over the last 10 or 12 days certainly has led to us making sure that we got this right and answered as many questions as we could as quickly as we can," Dotson said on Wednesday, according to St. Louis Public Radio.
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