Police released body-camera video Thursday from a six-hour standoff that ended with officers fatally shooting a Black Minneapolis man, but the images did not show whether he was holding a gun or threatening officers.
Authorities had said previously that two police snipers shot and killed 20-year-old Andrew Tekle Sundberg early last Thursday. His family has said he was experiencing a mental health crisis.
Mayor Jacob Frey and interim Police Chief Amelia Huffman declined to characterize the footage from officers at the scene. They urged anyone who might have other videos to come forward.
The police videos included audio of gunshots and officers saying “shots fired,” but the recordings did not make clear whether it was Sundberg or police who fired the shots.
Huffman said at a news conference that she had met with Sundberg’s parents and that they had seen the videos.
The family’s attorney, Jeff Storms, did not immediately reply to messages seeking comment.
Police went to the scene Wednesday night after a 911 call from a neighbor of Sundberg's who said he was firing a gun into her apartment, endangering her and her 2- and 4-year-old sons. One video from an officer in a stairwell showed officers bringing them to safety.
Police tried for hours to persuade Sundberg to surrender. They can be heard on one video, from an officer on ground level, telling him just minutes before he was shot that he was under arrest.
“We don't want to hurt you, we just want to go home,” one officer said.
The video from ground level showed Sundberg leaning in and out of his third-floor window, but it did not make clear what he may have been holding, nor did it show him being shot.
A video from one of the snipers across the street did not show Sundberg at all, but one officer could be heard asking “Is that a cellphone?” before saying the word “gun." Two shots could be heard. It also appeared to show one officer pulling the trigger of his rifle.
Investigators collected a .38-caliber handgun with an extended magazine from a bed in Sundberg's apartment, and live .45-caliber cartridges from a closet and a bowl in the living room, according to search warrant affidavits released Friday.
John Baker, a professor of criminal justice studies at St. Cloud State University who trains aspiring officers, said in an interview Tuesday that the key question to determining if the shooting was justified was whether there was an imminent threat to officers or others at the specific time they fired.
The shooting of Sundberg, who often went by his middle name of Tekle, stoked some activists’ mistrust of the Minneapolis Police Department and their perception that officers are quick to take Black lives while going to greater lengths to capture white suspects alive.
Police spokesman Howie Padilla said the department has so far not identified video showing “the clearest image” of what happened. He asked anyone with additional video to notify the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which is investigating the shooting.
