Walter Scott Shooting: New Dash-Cam Footage Shows Witness Taping Police Shooting
— -- New dash-cam video from a patrol car responding to a fatal officer-involved shooting in South Carolina shows the witness who taped the altercation as well as the officer who's now being held on murder charges.
This was the third piece of dash cam footage to be released in the ongoing investigation into the Saturday shooting where then-police officer Michael Slager fatally shot Walter Scott.
The new footage comes from a different vehicles, the officer behind the wheel responding to Slager’s calls to dispatch about the shooting. The video shows a police car turning down the street opposite the small road where the shooting took place.
For the first time, the witness, who has now been identified as Feidin Santana, is seen as he records the altercation on his cell phone from the other side of a chain link fence.
The police car then makes two left turns onto the road and is seen at the scene approaching what appears to be the first two officers on the scene, Slager and another officer whose name has not been released.
The footage from this second police car was released by the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, the state agency leading the investigation, just hours after they released a second recording from a dash camera from inside Slager’s police car.
The second recording shows a different officer patting down and then questioning a male passenger who was in the car when Scott was initially pulled over. Scott, 50, was pulled over for a broken taillight in North Charleston and ran from Slager. Authorities have not released the passenger's name. Slager fired eight shots at the fleeing man, killing him.
The exact timing of this second dash-cam footage is unclear, so it was not immediately known how long after Slager's shooting of Scott it took place. Both this and the earlier footage showing Scott running off were recorded on the dash cam of Slager’s patrol car.
Slager, who is not pictured in this new footage, was charged with murder Tuesday and is in custody but has not yet had to enter a plea. His new lawyer, Andy Savage, who was retained by Slager after his first lawyer dropped his case, issued a statement to ABC News saying that it is “too early for us to be saying what we think.”
