Video Shows 13-Year-Old Surrendered Before Cops Shot Him In The Back

Jesus, take the wheel!

Source: Jasmin Merdan / Getty

This tragic story is far too familiar. Chicago police shot yet another child. Unlike Adam Toledo and Laquan McDonald, the 13-year-old survived the police shooting at a gas station in May. Block Club Chicago reports new surveillance video shows that the unarmed boy had his hands in the air when a CPD officer shot him.

The 7th grader was a passenger in the car police suspected of involvement in a carjacking that the day before. The boy, only identified as A.G., jumped out of the car and fled on foot. Several officers chased him to a gas station where he appeared to surrender.

After he stopped running and raised his hands, an officer fired a shot into his back. According to Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown, two officers immediately dragged the boy’s body away after he collapsed to avoid the risk of the nearby gas pump exploding.

If CPD wanted to protect the boy from a deadly gas station explosion, maybe they shouldn’t have shot him at a gas station at all. Despite the go-to excuse of “fearing for their lives,” the only threats to those officers were other boys in blue. After the first trigger-happy cop nearly blew them up, another almost did the same when he crashed his car arriving at the gas station.

According to The Daily Beast, the footage confirms the claims the events described in a lawsuit the boy’s family filed.

“CPD officers did not render immediate aide to A.G., but instead callously dragged him across the pavement and then turned their attention to an uninjured officer who crashed into a sign at the gas station while arriving on scene.”

If the near-fatal shooting didn’t paralyze the boy, incompetent cops might have sealed his fate in the moments after. The video shows that they didn’t attempt to help A.G. They picked him up by the legs, dragged him away, and dumped him on the ground.

A.G. was rushed to Stroger Cook County Hospital in critical condition. According to the suit, despite complying with officers’ orders, “he has been permanently and catastrophically injured.” He currently “doesn’t have movement of his legs” and doesn’t know whether he will walk again.

Attorney Andrew Stroth told The Daily Beast that part of the bullet also damaged his esophagus and is still lodged in his spine.

“His wishes are to get healthy, his wishes are to walk, his wishes are to play basketball, his wishes are to ride his bike,” Stroth said.

“You got yet another Black young person shot in the back in a city that is under a federal consent decree, in a city that has not enacted a new foot pursuit policy that preserves and respects the sanctity of life.”

Police never confronted or arrested the driver from the night of the shooting or the driver from the carjacking the day before. A.G. wasn’t charged with a crime either, so officers nearly executed him for nothing.

“They said, ‘Put your hands up, put your hands up!’ The boy’s hands were up. There’s other people out there that seen it. I got it all on my phone—his hands were up. He didn’t have a gun. They shot him for no reason,” an eyewitness told ABC7.

A.G.’s family and attorney are demanding the release of all video related to the shooting, especially from the CPD body cameras.

The Chicago Police Department has not yet commented on the new video footage.