Christian Taylor was shot and killed early Friday morning in "an altercation" with police responding to a report of an in-progress burglary at a local car dealership.
According to The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Taylor drove his car through the front glass window of the Classic Buick GMC dealership's showroom. Surveillance footage did not capture the incident that led to Brad Miller, 49, firing on Taylor, nor was the officer wearing a body camera.
"The officers went and confronted him. There was an altercation. An officer discharged his weapon and struck the suspect," Sgt. Paul Rodriguez, a police spokesman, told The Telegram.
Taylor, a 19-year-old football player at Angelo State University (ASU), was pronounced dead at the scene. His great-uncle, Clyde Fuller, called Taylor a "good kid" and expressed doubt over what he was doing there in the first place.
"I think something is going on that somebody is lying about," Fuller told The Telegram. "They say he's burglarizing the place by running up in there? Nuh-uh. Something doesn't sound right."
The Arlington Police Department recently adopted a pilot program for officers to wear body cameras, but it had yet to be implemented, WFAA-TV reported. Taylor had previous legal run-ins related to drug possession, but it is not clear whether or not he was intoxicated at the time of his death.
Miller was going through field training under the supervision of another officer after graduating from the police academy in March, The Telegram reported. The police department will open a "thorough" review of the incident.
"We're having two independent investigations - a criminal and administrative," Rodriguez said. "As an agency, we take the loss of any human life as serious, but we owe it to our community to conduct a clear and transparent investigation to determine what exactly took place."
ASU head football coach Will Wagner expressed sorrow over Taylor's death.