On Thursday, Chicago police released body-camera video footage from more than two weeks ago, showing an officer shooting and killing a 13-year-old boy in an alley.
The nine-minute video begins with an anonymous police officer exiting his patrol car and chasing after Adam Toledo in an alley in Little Village, a neighborhood on the city's West Side, at 2:30 a.m. on March 29.
The officer then yelled "stop" at Toledo before catching up to him and ordering him to show him his hands.
Toledo appeared to raise his hands just as the officer fired a shot, then dashed over to the boy as he lay on the ground.
"Shots fired, shots fired," said the narrator. In the video, the officer can be heard saying, "Get an ambulance over here right now."
Toledo, according to the Chicago Police Department, had a pistol in his possession at the time of the shooting. In the video, it's unclear whether he did at the time of the shooting.
Officers were pursuing Toledo and a man after receiving a report of shots fired in the area, according to the police.
"A number of powers came together at 2:30 a.m. on March 29 in an alley, and simply put, we failed Adam," Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said at a press conference before the video was posted.
Third-party footage and other materials related to the incident were also released by the city's Civilian Office of Police Accountability.
The incident has heightened tensions in Chicago, as has the fatal police shooting of Daunte Wright in a Minneapolis suburb on Sunday and the murder trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in the May 2020 death of George Floyd.
"Chicago, like far too many other areas of our country, has a long history of police brutality and misconduct that has left far too many residents, especially Black and brown people, in a constant state of fear and pain," Lightfoot said.
Following the release of the video recordings, city leaders urged residents to stay calm as they prepared for civil unrest. During any violence, they said, more police officers and city equipment will be deployed to protect businesses. After Floyd's murder, which was also captured on tape, Chicago, like many other American cities, saw riots and looting.
Toledo's family thanked the community for its solidarity and expressed gratitude for the peaceful demonstrations in Chicago over the last few days, according to a statement released to local media.
“For the sake of our city, we pray that people remain peaceful in order to respect Adam's memory and work constructively to foster reform,” the family said.
