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Arlington, TX – The mother of a man who was fatally shot by police on Saturday is claiming a version of events very different from what was actually shown on police bodycam video (video below).
"He would never do anything to try and hurt a police officer," 24-year-old O’Shae Terry’s mother Sherley Woods told WFAA. "He posed no threat. He's sitting in the car with one of his friends."
But the bodycam and dashcam videos of the incident that were released by the Arlington Police Department told a drastically different story.
The incident began when an officer stopped the SUV driven by Terry at about 1:45 p.m. on Sept. 1 in the 2200-block of California Lane, according to the Dallas Morning News.
The officer had stopped the vehicle for expired registration, but a police news release said she smelled marijuana when the driver opened his window, WFAA reported.
She called for backup, and when the second officer arrived, he approached the passenger side of the SUV while the first officer returned to her police vehicle to run information through the computer.
The bodycam video released on Thursday showed the second officer stood beside the passenger’s window and chatted with Terry and his passenger in a friendly manner.
“Like I said, if you don’t have any more inside of the vehicle, you all shouldn’t be worried about it. We just have to do what we have to do. So that’s basically it,” the officer told them.
That’s when Terry began to roll up both of the front windows on the vehicle, and reached for the ignition switch, the video showed.
“Hey! Hey, hey hey hey! Hey Stop!” the officer yelled as he put his hand on the passenger’s window to stop it from closing. It appeared he was standing on the vehicle’s running board, the Dallas Morning News reported.
“I ain’t going nowhere. I ain’t going nowhere,” Terry replied as he started the SUV.
But then the video showed that Terry hit the gas with the officer still hanging off the side.
The officer yelled frantically at the driver. Then the video showed he pointed the gun into the SUV and fired at least five times.
Terry was hit twice, but he continued to accelerate.
Dashcam video from the first officer showed the SUV veered across the line onto the wrong side of the road with the second officer hanging from the window.
Then the vehicle slammed into a curb and knocked the officer free and onto the pavement, before it continued down the street and eventually stopped.
Terry died from his gunshot wounds.
Arlington Police Lieutenant Chris Cook said officers recovered more than a pound of marijuana, a bag of ecstasy pills, and a .40-caliber handgun with an extended 29-round magazine from inside Terry’s vehicle.
But his family, who has already retained attorneys to file a civil lawsuit alleging inappropriate use of force, have insisted that Terry had no plans to run from police despite what’s shown in the videos.
“We all know that the SUV had a problem with starting up, so if Terry tried to start up the vehicle while he was sitting there, it wasn’t that he was trying to flee the scene,” his mother told KTVT.
She told WFAA that her son was not a violent person despite a felony conviction for burglary, and misdemeanor convictions for marijuana possession and evading arrest.
Terry’s passenger was detained and then released by police. His name has not been released.
Police also have not identified the officers involved in the incident. The officer who fired his weapon was placed on paid administrative leave during the investigation as is protocol for officer-involved shootings.
You can see the video from the traffic stop below: