Video released by police Tuesday in the case of Carnell Snell shows Snell carrying a gun moments before police fatally shot him.
The video, however, failed to capture the moment when officers say 18-year-old Snell turned toward them with the gun in-hand twice.
The footage, posted to the police department’s YouTube page, shows a black man identified as Snell hiding behind a parked SUV at a strip mall, pulling a handgun from the waistband of his sweatpants. The man then tucks the gun back into his waistband before running around the corner of the strip mall as officers chase after him.
After that, the suspect and the officers disappear from the camera where the surveillance footage was captured.
The video supports LAPD Chief Charlie Beck’s account he gave in defense of the shooting, in which he emphasized the suspect had a clear opportunity to dispose of the gun, but instead decided to keep it when he ran toward the side of the strip mall, The Associated Press reported.
“Obviously if you’re not seeking confrontation why wouldn’t you just discard the weapon?” Beck said.
Snell’s encounter with police started shortly after 1 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 1, after officers attempted to pull over a car that had paper license plates.
According to Fox 5 San Diego, Beck said the officers believed the car was stolen because “the paper plates didn’t match the year of the vehicle,” and when the car didn’t stop, officers engaged it in a chase.
When the car did eventually slow down, a man identified as Snell jumped out of the back seat and ran as he held “his waistband as if he was supporting something,” Beck said, according to Fox 5.
As the on-foot chase came to an end, police shot at Snell six times, striking him twice.
“My daughter got a phone call,” Snell’s mother, Monique Morgan, tearfully told reporters, Fox 5 said. “It said that the police shot him.”
The Saturday shooting came at a time where tension is high between police officers and African-Americans due to multiple police-involved shootings of black people across the country.
Snell was the third black man in five days killed during a confrontation with Southern California police, the AP noted.