New body-cam video shows a police officer killing an unarmed man during a tense hotel hallway encounter

A newly released video depicts a January 2016 incident in which a police officer shoots an unarmed man after another officer berates and intimidates him.
The officer in the video was acquitted on Thursday of second-degree murder.
The victim was shot in a hotel hallway after police were called to respond to reports of someone pointing a gun out of a window.

A newly-released video shows an Arizona police officer shooting and killing an unarmed man in January 2016 after the man, who was crying and begging for his life, made a mistake in complying with his orders.

The body camera footage was released on Friday by the judge presiding over Officer trial after Brailsford was acquitted on Thursday for the killing.

The victim, 26-year-old pest control worker Daniel Shaver, was staying in the Mesa, Arizona while on a business trip when police received a call that someone was pointing a gun out of the window of the hotel, Newsweek reported. While Shaver had reportedly been showing off a pellet gun to two guests that night, according to witnesses, he was unarmed when the police confronted him in the hallway of the hotel.

In the video, Brailsford is seen standing by as another officer, commanded Shaver to get on the floor and crawl towards him, all while berating him and intimidating him with death threats. Shaver appeared to be complying with his orders, and can be heard sobbing as he crawls towards Brailsford and Langley. But after Shaver reached back toward his pant leg, Brailsford shot him five times with his AR-15, believing he was reaching for a gun.

After being charged with second-degree murder in May 2016, Brailsford was acquitted after less than six hours of deliberation by a jury, Vice News reported.

During the trial, Brailsford maintained that he did nothing wrong.

"If this situation happened exactly as it did that time, I would have done the same thing," Brailsford stated in court.

"There are no winners in this case," Brailsford's lawyer Michael Piccarreta said after the verdict was announced. "Mitch Brailsford had to make a split-second decision on a situation that he was trained to recognize as someone drawing a weapon and had one second to react."

Shaver is survived by his wife and two daughters. His wife and parents are filing a wrongful death suit against the Mesa Police Department, according to Vice News.

A previous version of this article indicated that it was Brailsford who was speaking in the video. The voice in the video is in fact Sgt. Langley's.

New body-cam video shows a police officer killing an unarmed man during a tense hotel hallway encounter

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