Video of man fatally shot by Raleigh police won’t be publicly released, judge rules
Video footage of a man being fatally shot by Raleigh police last week on Pleasant Valley Road will not by released to the public, a Wake County judge ordered Tuesday.
Superior Court Judge Becky Holt said the Raleigh Police Department cannot disseminate the video, which shows Keith Dutree Collins’ death, though it can be set up for a screening for the media.
District Attorney Lorrin Freeman said Collins’ family requested that it not be distributed.
“They’re obviously traumatized,” she said, “The video going up on news channels, more specifically on social media and being texted, it’s just traumatizing.”
Freeman said she had seen the video and that the officers’ conduct on the scene is still under investigation by the State Bureau of Investigation, which is standard procedure. The Police Department is preparing a five-day report summarizing the incident, also standard procedure.
Tuesday night, the police department announced that media would be allowed to view the video footage Wednesday at police headquarters. No recording devices will be permitted.
The shooting happened just after 3 p.m. Thursday on the sidewalk near Piney Grove AME Church, on the 3800 block of Pleasant Valley Road. The church is less than a mile east of Glenwood Avenue in the northern part of Raleigh.
A police officer was responding to a call about a man with a gun who was acting “strangely” near Pleasant Valley Promenade shopping center on Glenwood Avenue, Police Chief Cassandra Deck-Brown said at a press conference last week.
When the officer approached the man, later identified as Collins, he ran away. Collins “produced a weapon” during the pursuit, prompting the officer to fire at Collins, Deck-Brown said. Collins was struck multiple times, she said.
2nd police shooting
This is the second police-related shooting this year.
On Jan. 4, police shot at 18-year-old Najae Davonte Riley on Creech Road, allegedly after he tried to break into a car and pointed a gun at its owner. A follow-up report said the suspect “extended both hands together as if he was holding a firearm,” but the officer’s four shots did not hit him.
In December, Freeman cleared another Raleigh officer for shooting Hugo Cortes-Ramirez in the leg, saying he “acted in self-defense.”
Freeman is already investigating a Raleigh traffic stop in which officers grabbed, punched and kneed a driver who ignored orders to put his hands on the wheel. In that case, body camera footage was widely passed around Twitter and then released by police.
“We’re obviously in new territory entirely,” Freeman said. “This is the first video I can remember that clearly captures an individual being gunned down.”
This story was originally published February 4, 2020 at 11:41 AM.