Michigan police release bodycam footage showing what led to fatal shooting of Owings Mills man

After the family and their attorney requested unedited footage of the police shooting that left Isaiah Kirby of Owings Mills dead, officials in Michigan released the videos Friday.

Kirby, 21, was studying zoology at Michigan State University with his heart set on becoming a herpetologist, his family said. Kirby was fatally shot by East Lansing Police Department officers a little over a week before his graduation.

Shortly after 6 p.m. April 15, police responded to a theft at a business. That incident led them to a nearby nonfatal stabbing, police said.

After the incident, officials for the department said officers fatally shot the suspect involved in the stabbing, who they said was Kirby. Body-worn camera footage of the incident was meant to be released within weeks but was delayed after the family and their attorney criticized it for being “a highly edited, selectively compiled, and deeply one-sided presentation that raises more questions than answers.”

Kirby’s mother, Karyn Kirby, said she counted at least 17 gunshot wounds on her son’s body, some of which were on his back. On May 13, she and their family’s attorney released images of Isaiah Kirby’s body dotted with gunshot wounds.

After their calls for raw footage of the incident, police released some Friday with the faces of the officers and Kirby’s body after the gunfire blurred out.

The content released by the East Lansing Police Department on Friday afternoon included footage from body cameras worn by six police officers, audio from 911 calls and a video taken by a witness from a nearby coffee shop.

The department said the officers involved are Field Training Officer Beck Martin, who has served for three years at the department; Zane Johnson Chasteen, a three-month veteran; Brennan Surman, a two-year veteran; and Benjamin Saylor, a one-year veteran.

What the footage and audio released Friday show

The 911 callers described a fight that turned into a bloody stabbing outside Biggby Coffee following a theft at a nearby business.

The witness video shows a man in a black shirt leaning into the driver-side door of a car, getting out and walking around the parking lot. People inside the coffee shop repeat that the man has a knife and has stabbed someone. The man has an object that looks like a knife in his hand when police arrive.

The witness video pans over to a man in a white shirt sitting on the ground in the parking lot covered in blood. He was later identified as Douglas Mielock, the victim of the nonfatal stabbing. Another person is aiding him before police arrive, according to the witness video.

In body-worn police camera footage and dash-camera footage, officers pull over near the parking lot as a dispatcher gives descriptions of the suspect over the radio. Officers get out of their vehicles when they spot the suspect, later identified by officials as Kirby, running in the road in front of them.

“He’s running right towards me,” one officer says in his body-camera audio as he gets out of the vehicle. The footage was not labeled with officers’ names.

The officers yell at Kirby to get on the ground as he runs at them. Some of the officers have their guns drawn and fire shots at Kirby seconds later. Kirby hits the ground and screams.

After he is on the ground, Kirby leans up and holds up the knife but doesn’t stand up. Officers fire their weapons at him again. They yell “don’t move” and “put the knife down.”

Kirby begins to crawl. One officer pulls out his Taser just before more shots are fired. Kirby stops crawling and rolls back and forth before becoming motionless.

The officers tell Kirby to put the knife down so they can help him, but he stops moving, screaming or responding. Officers continue to tell Kirby to drop the knife.

A few officers leave the shooting scene to help the stabbing victim in the parking lot. On the footage, officers are heard saying the victim has wounds to his head and leg.

Minutes after shots were fired, officers approach Kirby with a shield to pin his hands down, take his knife and handcuff him. He lies motionless and covered in blood as officers begin to cut his clothes and render aid. One officer says, “looks like he’s got multiple gunshot wounds” and has been hit “all over.”

First responders who arrive soon after can be heard saying, “I don’t feel a pulse.” Seconds later, the medics say they are going to “call it.”

Community’s response

After the Kirby family reviewed the footage released Friday, their attorney, Teresa A. Caine Bingman, said in a statement that “it is clear that Isaiah Kirby was met with an immediate and overwhelming use of deadly force.”

“Within moments of arriving on the scene, East Lansing police officers did not use non-lethal options and immediately fired more than 20 rounds,” Bingman said. “The videos also show officers continuing to shoot after Isaiah had fallen to the ground and appeared to have been dead from the initial gunshot wounds.”

Bingman added that the family will continue to seek “truth, accountability, and justice for Isaiah Kirby.”

In a narrated video from the police department of the footage, the chief of police for the East Lansing Department, Jennifer Brown, said she wanted to “extend my deepest condolences to the Kirby family.”

“Any life lost is tragic, and this case is no exception,” Brown said. “The East Lansing Police Department will continue to remain transparent and cooperate with the investigation by the Michigan State Police.”

Kirby’s family received support from some in the East Lansing community, including the local branch of the NAACP. The organization has been critical of the East Lansing Police Department, calling for Brown to step down due to officers’ “excessive use of force.”

Police accountability and concerns related to transparency and Kirby’s death dominated the East Lansing City Council meeting Tuesday, just hours after his family and attorney led their own news conference. The first voice council members heard, though, was someone calling for consideration of the nonfatal stabbing victim and his family.

Shelley Davis Boyd, who says she is the mother of the victim’s children, said the victim, Mielock, an attorney and shareholder at Foster Swift Collins & Smith PC, suffered blunt-force trauma and around a dozen stab wounds when someone attacked him while he was leaving a barbershop.

Davis Boyd said their son was on the phone with Mielock during his attack, and someone nearby picked up the device, telling him his dad had been stabbed multiple times.

He called his mom back in tears. Davis Boyd said her son left his university to be near the family, and she rushed to get his sister from their house. Davis Boyd said Mielock had surgery and spent days in the intensive care unit.

The incident was traumatic for her children, Davis Boyd said, and the public attention due to the suspect being fatally shot by officers has worsened matters. Her children’s father’s survival does not equate to everything being OK, she told East Lansing City Council members.

“What has been especially difficult is watching so much public attention focus on the person accused of this violence, while the victim of this brutal and life-threatening attack has gone largely unrecognized and unacknowledged,” Davis Boyd said. “The loudest voices are not always the ones carrying the deepest wounds.”

Davis Boyd said she does not want what happened to Kirby to overshadow what he allegedly did and how it’s impacted her family.

“While we extend our condolences to the family suffering unimaginable loss, compassion for one family should not require the erasure of another,” Davis Boyd said.