By Aaron Sánchez-Guerra and Anna Johnson
Source The News & Observer (Raleigh)
The city of Raleigh released police body camera and security footage Thursday showing the fatal May 7 shooting of a man who threw Molotov cocktails at officers and police cars.
The footage shows a man, later identified as 37-year-old Reuel Rodriguez-Núñez, driving in a van to the Raleigh Police Department’s Southeast District police station.
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Rodriguez-Núñez exits the car, throws a container of “bodily fluids” at the entrance of the police station, and then retrieves a cup with flammable liquid he ignites and throws at a parked SUV, security footage shows.
He throws a separate projectile at a parked police vehicle. Flames spurt out for a moment, and then burn more intensely for several minutes.
A police car arrives in the parking lot several feet away, and Rodriguez-Núñez chucks three cups with the flammable liquid at it before a second car arrives.
In footage labeled Body Camera 3, an officer pulls up as radio traffic says the suspect is “throwing molotov cocktails at us.”
The officer, with his gun in his hand, runs toward the police station and stands closest to the suspect.
“Go ahead (expletive) do it,” he says. “Do it! Do it! Go a-(expletive)-head. Go right (expletive) ahead. Go ahead (expletive). Do it. Do it.”
A different officer says “put your hands up” as the officer on body camera 3 continues to say “do it.”
“Give me the go ahead,” the officer on body camera 3 says.
Multiple officers engage the man and command him to drop the Molotov cocktails, the footage shows.
“Take your hands out of your (expletive) pockets!” one officer shouts, along with “do not do it” and “Don’t do it (expletive), I’m done with you!”
The man proceeds to fill more cups with flammable liquid and throws one at the officer closest to him.
Multiple officers fire at him as they close in, continuing to yell at him to put his hands up after he falls to the pavement upon being shot outside the station.
Police previously said six minutes elapsed from the first officer arriving to the fatal shooting.
Officers said they fired a total of 30 rounds. None of the officers were injured in the incident.
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