On April 2, , year-old African-American Eric Courtney Harris was fatally shot during an undercover sting in Tulsa, Oklahoma , as Harris ran from authorities unarmed. I'm sorry. It was later determined that Harris did not have a gun when he was tackled and shot.
A sunglasses-camera video [ 6 ] shows his arms flailing as he runs. Bates was later charged with second-degree manslaughter. Harris family attorney Donald Smolen said the sunglasses video shows Deputy Bates with a yellow Taser strapped to his chest and a.
Bates had been trained at all, which I believe will be reflected ultimately through the lack of records to substantiate his training, that an officer who was trained would [ever] get these two weapons confused," Smolen said. In the video, Harris can be heard saying, "I'm losing my breath," to which year-old Deputy Joseph Byars replies, "Fuck your breath. Tulsa Police Sgt. Jim Clark, hired as an "expert witness" for the sheriff's department, said at a news conference on April 10, , that Bates "was a true victim of slips and capture ", and that it was typical for law enforcement officers to experience diminished hearing, tunnel vision, or go into "autopilot", where a person's behavior "slips" off the path of his intention because it is "captured" by a stronger response and sent in a different direction.
Smolen told the Tulsa World that Clark's ruling was "premature and ill-advised", challenging a report that Harris was "uncooperative and combative" as firefighters attempted to administer aid, and Harris could hardly be combative since he was struggling with labored breathing and his hands were cuffed.
Harris struggling to get air and kind of writhing in pain from the gunshot wound. The Tulsa Police Department immediately sought to clarify their relationships with both Bates and Clark. The next year he gave the department a used Toyota Avalon intended for " Glanz said during an interview with a radio station that the sheriff's deputy who certified Bates had moved on to work for the Secret Service , [ 16 ] while the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office denied providing Bates with the training he claimed.
