deon kay shooting video
Courtesy DC Police Department
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By Ashraf Khalil, AP

Police in the nation’s capital on Thursday released body camera footage from the officer who fatally shot a Black teenager a day earlier, leading to protests outside Mayor Muriel Bowser’s home and a police station.

Deon Kay, 18, was shot in the chest Wednesday afternoon in the midst of a foot pursuit with police officers.

Early Thursday morning, the local Black Lives Matter affiliate tweeted that the “Terror Gang has once again taken the life of a young man,” and demanded the immediate release of the footage.

The video shows a brief and chaotic scene. As a police car pulls into the parking lot of a southeast Washington apartment complex, the officer jumps out and begins chasing someone. The officer turns around, sees Kay running a few feet behind him and fires a single shot into Kay’s chest.

 

Police identified that officer as Alexander Alvarez, who joined the department in 2018. He has been placed on administrative leave.

The police video later freezes the frame and circles what appears to be a pistol in Kay’s hand. But it’s unclear whether Kay, who had officers in front and back of him, was intending to use the weapon or throw it away.

Immediately after the shooting, as other officers tend to Kay, the officer who fired the shot begins frantically looking for Kay’s gun in the surrounding grass. The handgun was found about 98 feet away, a distance that Metropolitan Police Department chief Peter Newsham said “does seem like a long way to throw a weapon.”

“Everyone can go and look at the video for themselves,” Newsham said. “You can stop it frame by frame and make your own determination. We will do the same when we conduct our investigation.”

The shooting occurred at a time of nationwide protests over police killings of Black people and calls for sweeping changes in policing.

Bowser said her administration had rushed to release the video “to help the public answer some questions. What I know is that our officer was trying to take guns off the street and what I know is that he encountered somebody with a gun.”

Authorities did not release the video from other officers on the scene.

The Associated Press was seeking to locate Kay’s family for comment.

Emergency legislation passed by the D.C. Council in June requires the police to release any body camera footage from any fatal shootings or use-of-force incidents within five days. Newsham said his department worked overnight to make the footage public well ahead of that deadline,

“One of the reasons we put it out as quickly as we did is because there’s a lot of misinformation in the current climate that we have — not only in Washington D.C., but across the country. Misinformation can lead to some disturbances in our city and that’s the last thing we want to see,” Newsham said.

Newsham described Kay as a “validated gang member” who had multiple run-ins with local law enforcement, although the chief he refused to got into specifics. He said officers were drawn to the area by a video posted on social media that showed two young Black men, one wearing a mask, showing off handguns inside a car.

“They knew Mr. Kay when they saw the livestream. They knew him by name,” Newsham said. “I know that he’s a validated gang member from the area and I know that he’s had multiple touches with the criminal justice system. … I’m pretty sure that Deon Kay fell through multiple safety nets before yesterday afternoon.”

The U.S. attorney’s office will conduct an independent review of the shooting.

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106 COMMENTS

  1. Fu*k police reform, how bout you start teachin your boys from childhood that gangs and guns will get you killed. But that would involve a two parent household where at least one of them wasnt a criminal. Always someone else’s fault, right!?

    • yea , if the police yell stop , you f–kin stop , white people do ? thats why they dont get shot . i want to know how old are you when your parents teach you to run from police men ? and if i carry a gun , the only time it comes out of the holster is to shoot someone , not to show it off to the world or friends ! and u want to be in a gang ? plenty of gangs in jail , u get to pick one the first week that your in

    • BREAKING: Body camera footage just released from yesterday’s fatal shooting of 18yo Deon Kay in DC. The officer could have used “less-lethal tactics” but chose to SHOOT him instead… Even after he threw his gun on the ground. We need police reform NOW. #JusticeForDeonKay – Dumbass Ben Crump

      The person threatening cops “could” have used better judgement – like not sprinting toward a cop with a gun in hand, or listening to the police when they yell “don’t move.” There is a lot of things this person “could” have done to not get shot, like a normal rational person would have done. We need cultural reform and criminals need to reform themselves NOW. #EducationForIdiots

      The police video later freezes the frame and circles what appears to be a pistol in Kay’s hand. But it’s unclear whether Kay, who had officers in front and back of him, was intending to use the weapon or throw it away.

      Intent matters in the court. It doesn’t matter in self defense, because nobody knows your “intent.” When you are sprinting towards them with a gun. Particularly when you are a police officer, yelling repeatedly “don’t move!” Further, why not drop the gun and back away? Instead he tried to throw it as far as he could.
      For a moment, it looked like he was going to club the officer with something. After watching the video a few times, I determined he was throwing a gun. Which makes it look like he didn’t want to be caught with it.

      Is this another hero of BLM for future gold caskets and murals? I’m not going to lie, BLM’s martyr’s suck!

      • Yes but the cop doesn’t have the benefit of reviewing video to determine what the gun holder is going to do. If the arm is coming up with pistol in hand, in that split second the cop is thinking he needs to fire first.

        • These arm chair “experts” that second guess everyone else really piss me off. No one is trying to kill the “genius” that’s watching the replay, so there is no stress or split second decision to make. These idiots will continue to die until ( if) they ever figure out to not do stupid sh@t. These idiots parents are the ones that do not raise these criminals to be decent citizens and are the ones to blame for their deaths.

    • Yeah, I noticed that too.

      Looks to me like MOST of these Black Ghetto Monkeys are killing themselves.

      ALL have felony records.

      NO angels here.

  2. Obviously, his hands were up and they shot him down like a dog. Then they took the candy he was holding and planted the gun.

    (sarc…)

  5. It has NOTHING to do with being “black”. These violent felons need to put their butts on the ground when asked by police. Put their hands in the air and shut up! Allow themselves to be peacefully arrested, taken to jail, fingerprinted and photographed, and then, have their attorney represent them. If there was no crime, no harm and they will be released. But if they resist it is the officer’s job, granted by our laws, to put them down! So just don’t resist. If you did nothing wrong it will be cleared up in a few hours. But if these punks refuse to obey the law enforcement lawful orders to surrender and be arrested and they resist and point weapons at the police they will be killed, and that is the RIGHT thing to do. So when the nice officer says “get on the ground, show me your hands, don’t resist”, do it! Or your butt (be it black, white, green, yellow or purple) will be killed! God Bless.

    • That is the slope we find ourselves on currently.

      So a question.. Does the law allow one to resist a completely unlawful arrest?

      An example of mistaken identity maybe? Or a police officer arresting someone for a made-up law? A SWAT team forcing entry into your house…the wrong house?

      • There have been people involved in shootouts with the police and the courts kicked them lose. I never want to find out if a judge would side with me in that situation. I’d much rather never have a violent encounter with anyone, including the cops.

        Antifa may not allow that to happen.

      • Does resisting arrest keep one from being arrested? Regardless of whether it’s for a “made up” law or a “wrong house” SWAT assault?

      • In most jurisdictions it’s completely legal to resist an unlawful arrest.
        The issue is how do you prove it was unlawful?
        The system truly is rigged to support law enforcement.

        • That’s not true. It once was. There was a time when that was how it was under Common Law. But laws have changed over the years, and in most places these days it’s “comply now, grieve later”.

    • Comply or die. Fairly obvious choice.

      But complying may be difficult if several cops are using the “Israeli Technique” of shouting contradictory commands.

      • using the “Israeli Technique” of shouting contradictory commands.

        Enter the realm of common sense… Drop whatever weapon you might be carrying (don’t TOSS it, don’t throw it, don’t move your arms, just open your hand and drop it) slowly put your hands behind your head and lock your fingers, slowly back away from the weapon and drop to your knees, they can figure out the rest while you get to continue breathing….

  7. Video is pretty cut and dried. He had a gun, he had not complied with any instructions. He could have stopped and dropped the firearm. He may have been trying to throw the gun a long ways off hoping the police wouldn’t find it, but by bringing the gun back up from the lower position he could have planned to shoot the officer in front of him. I guess we will never know. If I were to give the benefit of the doubt to one or the other, I side with the officer. We pay our police to keep the peace and help citizens in need. We don’t pay them to get shot. From my view he has less than a second to make a decision, if wrong he and others could have been injured or killed. He done good. Not the easy thing, but the right thing in these circumstances.

  9. thanks to the dc police for the quick release of the tape , it shows the cop was in the right , what dumb ass runs with a gun with the police chasing him ,

    • Hell, they just got word that commie Bowser didn’t want rioting at her house tonight. No way to blame bad orange man so they got their order to un-memory hole the video.

  12. So, here we go again, confusing everyone with a bunch of pesky facts… How do we know this is not some kind of Hollywood digitally enhanced video, staged with some look alike gang banger… Nice try, but you ae NOT going to fool those astute liberal DC voters, it can only get better OR worse, either way who cares it’s DC after all… Burn it ALL down, BLM…

  13. He’s dead because he was stupid. He will now be elevated to sainthood by BLM and his family. They will publish his 4th grade photo when he was just 16 and print same on T-shirts. And if you happened to be walking to your car at 10:05 pm, this saint would have pulled that gun on you to rob you or take your car, and you would be the one lying on a stainless steel table in the morgue. That shot the cop took saved someone’s life, maybe yours.

  15. “The police video later freezes the frame and circles what appears to be a pistol in Kay’s hand. But it’s unclear whether Kay, who had officers in front and back of him, was intending to use the weapon or throw it away.”

    I guess we should let him shoot a couple cops just to make sure?

    Like, seriously, is this the point we are at? Where you have some gang member running up behind a cop while holding a gun and that’s not enough justification for deadly force?

  16. But I do know what it’s like to be a white slave working for da man to help support all dem single moms with all dem babies that planned parenthood didn’t get a hold of…….

  18. So sad, Too bad…
    don’t be a wannabe GANGSTA ,,,
    Back the BLUE FOOL, & do what you’re told…
    We gotta be getting close to 12% by now.

  21. Bringing the weapon up to shoot the officer or to toss the gun as far as he could would, to the startled police officer in the fraction of a second he had to respond, would look entirely the same. The eye is drawn to the movement, and the instinct is to shoot. There is no time to think; think and guess wrong and you die. Idiot would have lived had he dropped the gun, but after multiple run-ins with the police he probably assumed that being caught with an illegal firearm–which is what would have happened had he dropped it–meant prison.

  22. Obvious this little asshole needed to be shot. Find out who sold him the gun and arrest and torture all of the BLM and Antifa trash in the immediate vicinity that use this as an excuse to riot and burn private and public property. This is a scam arranged by Communists and extremists using any black thug shot as an excuse for violence.

  23. He threw the gun 98 feet? What an arm! Damn, dat boi had a big future in Gunball, which is a baseball game played with Hi-Points in certain neighborhoods.

  24. All of the tactical details that are significant to people of the gun are irrelevant to the people who have drank the BLM Cool Aid. The perpetrator was Black and he was shot by a cop. Nothing else matters.

    Everyone needs to contemplate a future in which you hope that the police are defunded and disbanded. Creepy Joe Biden and Cameltoe Harris are going to retask the police to hunt down and kill gun owners. It will be worse than Bill Clinton and Rambo Reno.

  25. ben crump is a racist, race baiting,piece of shit. A young 18 iirc black girl was shot in her car ,her grand mother with her, local to me. Less than a year ago. Word quickly spread the shooter was white. That pos was all over it, to represent the family. As soon as it came out the shooter was black he bailed town so fast would have thought he was the shooter.
    The family denounced him as the pos he is. Look his history up race baiting scum.

  26. I invite Attorney Crump to suit up and walk or ride a beat where he as an officer would have to make life and death situations in a split second to ensure that he got to go home to his family at the end of the shift. It is easy to sit back and say something so stupid that it makes no sense. The officer sees a gun and in less than a second the gun is brandished and raised up. The officer would have had to be an incredible mind reader to know that the felon was intending to through the gun especially when the thug is facing you directly!! Freaking moron looking for a payday!!

  27. Blacks, browns, whites and yellows all get shot by the police yet only blacks burn down the neighborhood when some gangsta buys the farm. Why is that?

  28. All you saying this shooting was justified are walking on thin ice … it’s only a matter of time before *holding* a gun justifies the cops shooting you. And then when they come knocking and you don’t submit to confiscation, they’ll shoot you and say you were “dangerous” bc you wouldn’t voluntarily give up your guns.

    The 2A folk need to be consistent – what law did he break before he got shot? Not a peep about that from you all – will be it ok when they blast your ass for failing to submit to confiscation??

    You’ll be breaking the law when they come for your gun and you don’t readily submit… will you be signing the same tune?

    This kind of crap makes TTAG look bad, look inconsistent, and looks weak

    • Very few of us engage in criminal activity like you do so it is very unlikely that we will encounter the police with a gun in our hands. We all know the transition from a DGU to police intervention carrys its risks which is why you should holster or put down your firearm before the police arrive and follow their instructions to letter. If you choose to do otherwise I won’t be looting the local Target on your behalf.

      • after the threat is past, and before police arrive. I’d recommend placing it on the ground, with a foot on top, keep hands above waistline. This way, you are both unarmed and in control of your firearm. Listen to the officers commands. It will lower the tension while police assess the situation, and also be useful in the inevitable court case. This, of course, assumes the threat has ended.

    • Hey Joe where u going with that Gun in your hand?
      Other than the woman who was shot by buffoons that stormed the wrong address most of the deceased invited the police into their lives. Had the vast majority of the perps been law abiding and not doing something stupid the police would have never been around them. Solution? When busted simply surrender.
      If you want to meet a cop drive like a fool or act like a fool. If you do not want to meet a cop don’t drive like a fool or act like a fool.
      Based on the topic…Zig-zagging around trying to connect criminal activity to holding a gun to gun confiscation is exorbitant.

      • +1 to this. If you do get stopped, everyone makes mistakes, it’s yes sir, no sir, thank you sir… or mam. Show respect to receive respect. I’ve done stupid things, got stopped. Be honest and don’t do anything to further compound the issue. Definitely don’t raise a weapon after being told to drop it. I get uneasy and scold known friends about muzzle control if they mishandle a firearm I’ve cleared and never lost sight of. This was a known gang banger. He gets the Darwin award.

      • Breonna Taylor was a named person on the warrant. Her ex used her house to.store drugs on occasion. That is probably why he is an ex.
        They did not storm her house. They announced before entering we know this for two reasons. First her new boyfriend told the police that he did not believe it was the police and thought it was a home invasion. Rip crews have been known to use the police ruse. But as gun people we know the cops had to announce. Why do I say this? Because it was the middle of the night and they were asleep. If the cops just burst in they would have been on top of them before Taylor And Walker knew what was going on. But Walker was at the bedroom door and Taylor was standing behind him. Well, they could have the skills of Michael Westen and Fiona Glenann. You make the call.

        • Yes, her apartment was the intended target of a proper search warrant. We don’t know they announced — it was a no-knock warrant. We know they knocked (boyfriend’s testimony). We know, from jailhouse phone transcripts of the ex, that the boyfriend insisted to other inmates that they didn’t announce. We know they were in plain clothes. We know that one stayed outside and fired through a windows with closed blinds and wasn’t able to see a target. We know the boyfriend fired at officers and was not shot. We know the boyfriend was released without charges pressed, so somebody believed his version of events. We know Breonna was not armed, but she was shot 7 times while in the hallway. If they boyfriend was the only one shot, I don’t think it would have been much of an issue. In this case, the police shot the wrong person.

        • “fired through a windows with closed blinds and wasn’t able to see a target.”

          In other words, tragic but not racist as the media/dems/BLM claim.

    • they’ll shoot you and say you were “dangerous”

      That’s exactly what they will have to do IF they come to MY door determined to confiscate my legally owned firearms based solely on a rule put in place by a bunch of commie wanna-bes, that is a hell of lot different than confronting an armed felon/gang banger suspected of engaging in a violent crime who is also resisting with a high probability of violent response to the cops instructions…

    • From a general view, it’s a valid point from Joe. Maybe not in this instance since the run-up is kinda confusing as to whats going on.

      Examples like the guy who opened his apt. door, the officer who shot through a house window in South Carolina, the drunk guy in the hotel hallway..(he didn’t even have a gun)

  30. The real tragedy of this shooting is that Kay wasn’t in the NFL or at least the US Olympic shot put team. He appears to have had a very good arm. Thank his those cops had cameras. Nobody ( including me) would have believed that gun was thrown that far unless we saw the video. I would have thought the shooter planted it , esp since he found the gun

  31. Perhaps if you took classes instead of cutting them, you might have an education, a steady job, and a reasonable income.

    If you want something, work for it. Welfare is barely an existence.

  33. WHY THEY DO WHAT THEY DO

    C’mon MAN, watch the newest ad from the Biden campaign that writes off America and police officers as innately racist. Breitbart News also confirms that the ad wrongly claims black Americans as inherent victims. In the former vice president’s most recent 2020 commercial, he asserts that black Americans are at risk of death while “just living their life.” The one-minute ad then goes on to assert that black Americans aren’t “free” from “manifestations” of racism or “treated with dignity.”
    Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris, is then heard citing a need for police reform in the United States. Harris then goes on to back the removal of certain police protections, such as qualified immunity. The former vice president then claims that America is at a crossroads with an opportunity to alter lives “for the better.”

  36. f!@K BLM.. F!@k thugs who are violating the law carrying firearms.. start acting civilized and quit being a dirtbag and you won’t get shot by the police.. Nice shooting!

  37. America has become LA LA land.
    The irony of this post is manifold:
    1. “the officer was trying to remove guns from the streets…” by shooting people.
    2. all the people in this thread saying “Violating laws BY carrying fireams”
    (shall not be infringed, all gun laws are wrong)
    3. virtually all gang violence is based on illegal drug sales.
    Drug laws are ALSO unconstitutional and based entirely on the fears of the WASPs
    4. the vast majority of interactions of the now very militarized police and
    “undocumented pharmacists” is due to the FACT that prohibition creates criminals.
    eg. no drug territory, no gang turf
    reforms of the police will help and ARE needed(don’t @ me, I’m not saying cops don’t get to defend their lives), BUT, without reforming, reviewing and repealing the vast majority of laws passed “for your own good”, this is only going to get worse.

  38. The people who say it’s wrong to expect people to simply comply with police orders so they don’t get shot are the same people who say if someone wants to rob/assault/rape/murder you that you should just let them or it will just make things worse.

  39. Originally posted by another person on a different site. Seems appropriate here.
    The Dichotomy of the troubled Liberal Mind: ~ If a dude pretends to be a woman, you are required to pretend with him ~ Somehow it’s un-American and racist for the census to count how many Americans are in America ~ Foreign interference in our elections is bad, but illegal aliens voting in our elections is good. ~ Crowded, violent “protests” are encouraged, but singing in church is a public health violation ~ Sexualizing children is bad, but 11-year-old drag queens are good ~ Illegal aliens aren’t required to show ID, but American citizens can’t buy cough medicine without it. ~ People who have never owned slaves should pay reparations to people who have never been slaves ~ Inflammatory rhetoric is outrageous, but harassing people in restaurants is virtuous. ~ Acknowledging gender is bad, but we have to have a woman for Joe Biden’s V.P. running mate. ~ $5 billion for border security is too expensive, but $1.5 trillion for “free” health care for illegal aliens is not. ~ Believing that ALL LIVES MATTER is racist, but #BlackLivesMatter is celebrated ~ Checking gov’t ID to buy cigarettes is good, but checking gov’t ID at the voting booth is racist xenophobic ~ Liberals say never hold all of groups responsible for the actions of a few – but it’s OK to smear and generalize all police officers because of one cop BTW – Pointing out any of this hypocrisy is racist and xenophobic

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