Chicago releases graphic video of police shooting 13-year-old boy

Chicago officials on Thursday released to the public body-camera video footage showing a 13-year-old boy being shot by a police officer last month, a video the mayor of the city said was “incredibly difficult to watch.”

The video of the fatal police shooting of Adam Toledo was released two days after his family was shown the footage and 17 days after the shooting itself, which happened in the early morning hours of March 29 in Little Village, a Mexican neighborhood on the city’s West Side.

The teenager was shot in the chest and killed when officers, who were responding to notification of eight shots fired in the area, saw "two males in a nearby alley," the department said. The other man was arrested.

The video began by showing an unidentified police officer getting out of his squad car and running after Toledo in the alley at 2:30 a.m. 

The footage shows the officer yelling "stop" to Toledo before he caught up to him. The officer is then shown ordering the boy to show him his hands. Toledo appeared to raise his hands right before the officer fired one shot and then immediately ran to the boy as he fell to the ground.

WARNING: The video below contains graphic content and may be disturbing to some viewers.

The officer then calls for medical assistance, saying "shots fired by the police" as he requests an ambulance. The officer asks Adam if he is alright and where he was shot.

"Stay with me, stay with me" the officer said. "Somebody bring the medical kit now!"

Although the Chicago Police Department said Toledo had a gun in his hand, an attorney for the Toledo family said that the video showed Adam did not have a gun at the time of the shooting.

"Adam, during his last second of life, did not have a gun in his hand. The officer screamed at him, 'Show me your hands.' Adam complied, turned around, his hands were empty when he was shot in the chest at the hands of the officer. He did not have a gun in his hand," attorney Adeena Weiss Ortiz said in a news conference after the video was released.

The incident, along with fatal police shooting of Daunte Wright in a Minneapolis suburb and the murder trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in the May 2020 death of George Floyd, has intensified tensions in Chicago.

"Chicago, as well as way too many parts of our country, has a long legacy of police violence and police misconduct that have left far too many residents, especially those who are Black and brown, in a constant state of fear and pain," Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said.

“I have seen those videos and let me just say, they are incredibly difficult to watch, particularly at the end,” Lightfoot said, describing the boy’s death as a tragedy.

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