The agency that investigates use of force by Chicago police released body camera video Tuesday showing an officer fatally shooting a man who refused to drop a knife in an Englewood apartment last month.
Police encountered Turrell Brown, 28, while answering a domestic call on the morning of Sept. 19 in the 6500 block of South Harvard Avenue, according to the Civilian Office of Police Accountability.
Two officers were called to the apartment by a woman who said she was hit in the face by her boyfriend who was also armed with a knife, according to a 911 call released by COPA.
After the officers arrived, the woman tells them her boyfriend had hit her all over her side and face. “He pulled a knife on me too,” she says, adding that he is still in the apartment with a knife, according to body cam video.
Feeling out of the loop? We'll catch you up on the Chicago news you need to know. Sign up for the weekly Chicago Catch-Up newsletter here.
As the officers walk through the apartment, Brown can be heard yelling at them and the officers pull out their guns and retreat just outside of the apartment, the video shows.
Brown emerges from a room waving what appears to be a knife in his right hand. “Put it down, put the knife down, put it down,” an officer yells.
Brown is obscured by a wall for a brief moment, and when he reemerges he doesn’t appear to be holding anything in his right hand, but his left hand is obscured, the video shows.
Local
Brown slowly steps closer to the officers and appears to extend his right arm toward the door of the apartment to try to close it. An officer again tells him to put the knife down before firing three shots, striking him.
A knife appears to fall from his left hand, according to the video.
“Officers gave verbal commands to drop the knife, which resulted in an officer discharging his firearm, fatally striking the individual,” COPA said. The agency, which also released documents and other recordings, said it is continuing to investigate the shooting.
Two weeks after the encounter, police fatally shot another man in a domestic call under similar circumstances. Police responded to a “domestic disturbance” the morning of Oct. 4 and saw a man and woman fighting inside a second-story apartment in the 7700 block of South Carpenter Street in Gresham, police said.
Police fatally shot Michael A. Craig, 61, and said they recovered a knife, although police would not say if Craig was holding a knife when he was shot. Video of the shooting has not been released yet.
