St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell on Tuesday closed the case of the August 2019 shooting death of Terry Tillman without charging the white police officer who fired seven rounds at the 23-year-old Black man more than 16 months ago.
“We recognize that it took too long to provide answers in this case,” Bell said in a news release. “The COVID-19 pandemic complicated the process of compiling the video evidence, but that is an explanation, not an excuse. All of us in law enforcement need to work toward providing closure more quickly, even in pandemic conditions and even in complicated cases.”
That video evidence, compiled into a 16-minute clip, was shown to members of the news media after Tillman’s family requested it not be released to the public, according to Bell’s office.
The video shows Tillman getting out of a car’s passenger side at 2:59 p.m. the day of the shooting. The video shows him enter the Saint Louis Galleria through the Macy’s Brentwood Boulevard entrance and then shows him as he walks through the store into the main area of the shopping mall.
In the footage, Tillman appears to have a gun tucked into his waistband.
Tillman is then seen interacting with what appears to be an acquaintance at the clothing store Turbulence just before he is approached by two police officers at 3:05p.m. The report states they saw him walking around the mall with a gun, which the mall prohibits. He is seen in the footage interacting with the officers for a few seconds before running away, tripping over a rack of clothes.
A 128-page police report states the officers asked him for his ID right before he ran and notes Tillman was aware that he was a convicted felon and that he was an active fugitive.
Officers ran after him and followed him to the attached parking garage and then to the open-air parking lot. The officers radioed in for backup and dash cam footage shows two Richmond Heights police officers driving toward the area surrounding Simmons Bank, the area Tillman was last seen running to.
One officer approached the bank’s parking garage from the west and the other approached from the east. The officer on the east side drove to the upper level of the garage where he encountered Tillman and later reported Tillman did not listen to his commands to drop the gun and get on the ground, instead the officer said he continued running.
Almost simultaneously, the officer on the west side started walking up the western staircase to the upper level of the parking garage and ran into Tillman who was about to descend the stairs. The officer and Tillman were about six steps away from each other when the officer shot Tillman seven times, including at least once after the officer fell backward down the stairs and landed on his back on the ground.
It appeared Tillman had a gun in his hand, but he did not point it at the officer. The officer can be heard on the video yelling “Drop the gun mother******” after he landed on the ground and Tillman replied “I dropped it, I dropped it.”
In an interview afterward, the officer who fired the shots said he did recall going up the stairs, falling, firing the last shot on the ground.
“And I had my gun pointed up the stairs. And the subject came flying or running,” he told detectives during an interview. “… He didn’t see me. And that’s when I fired … I don’t know how many times. His feet kept going and his body went down and he kind of rolled to the side.”
Officers attempted to administer CPR to Tillman, but medical personnel arrived and pronounced him dead at 3:15 p.m.
Prosecutors say while Tillman’s trigger was pulled in, there was no bullet in the chamber and evidence indicated he did not fire the gun during the entire encounter with police that day. Tillman’s magazine had 28 cartridges of .40 caliber ammunition., the police report stated.
Community response
Tillman’s death brought together a coalition of community leaders questioning the police’s actions, including the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, International Black Freedom Alliance, Organization For Black Struggle, Progressive National Baptist Convention and Universal African People’s Organization.
They began speaking out Tuesday night in light of the decision not to charge the officer, whose name will not be released per department policy.
“Wesley [Bell] has a pattern of not having prosecutorial courage to prosecute these officers who are, for whatever reason, making mistakes and shooting people or are intentionally shooting people, I don’t know, but what we’re not getting is the truth out of these investigations,” Amir Brandy said. Brandy is a Ferguson activist and co-founder of Real STL News.
Tory Russell, mission director of the International Black Freedom Alliance, felt similarly.
“We have to continue to fight on, I think people believe that progress has happened in Ferguson because a couple of Black negroes have become mayor or the prosecutor,” he said. “The progress for the everyday working class Black person in St. Louis County — there is no progress. It just looks like it on the national [level].”