When police in Bridgeton, N.J., pulled over Leroy Tutt’s car on the night of Dec. 30, it was because he had rolled through a stop sign. Minutes later, his passenger, 36-year-old Jerame Reid, was killed in a hail of bullets fired by officers Braheme Days and Roger Worley.
The Bridgeton Police Department has now released dash-cam footage of the fatal encounter, in which Officer Days, who is black, approaches the passenger window and asks for Tutt’s license. After spotting a gun in the glove department, both Days and Worley, a white man, draw their weapons, with Days warning Tutt and Reid not to move.
“Show me your fucking hands!” Days yells as he struggles with the car door. “Don’t you fucking move! I’m telling you, I’m going to shoot you. You’re going to be fucking dead … Jerame, you reach for something, you’re going to be fucking dead.”
“Let me out of the fucking car,” Reid says, finally emerging with his hands in front of his chest, at which point both Worley and Days open fire, killing him.
Tutt, whose raised hands are visible throughout, then lies down in the street to be handcuffed.
Bridgeton police only released the video in response to a public-records request from the South Jersey Times. Capt. Michael Gaimari of the Bridgeton P.D. said that the department did not “consider the posting of any such video as compassionate or professional.”
Days and Worley are on administrative leave while the department investigates their use of deadly force. Days had arrested Reid the previous summer “on charges of obstruction, resisting arrest, possession of narcotics and failure to appear in Millville Municipal Court.”
Conrad J. Benedetto, an attorney representing Reid’s wife, Lawanda Hartsfield-Reid, said that she was “extremely upset” by the video. Having seen it just once himself, Benedetto remarked that “it would be premature to draw any conclusions without further reflection.”
The results of an autopsy on Reid, meanwhile, have yet to be disclosed.
H/T Daily Beast | Screengrab via NJ.com/YouTube