The surveillance footage of shooting of University of South Alabama student by a campus policeman has been released.
It shows student Gil Collar was not armed and did not attack the police officer. This really tightens the noose around the Police Officer Trevis Austin with victim's lawyer questioning the need for the cop to use a lethal weapon on a naked guy.
Lawyer Jere Beasley contended that Austin faced no threat by Collar and using a deadly weapon on the victim was not justified in the case.
"I can tell you without reservation that nothing we saw on the video tape justified the use of deadly force in this case," WearTV quoted Beasley as saying.
In the footage Austin is seen engaged in a kind of brawl with Collar for about two minutes before being gunned down in the wee hours of Saturday.
The 18-year-old is said to have approached the campus police station at around 1:23 a.m according to the timing shown in the footage. A naked Collar strived in vain to force open the locked doors of the police station and hits the window apparently for six times before he leaves the place for a short interval.
Approximately at 1:24 a.m Austin, steps out of the station with his gun drawn. Noticing him, Collar tries to approach the police officer, who begins to retract. Feeling a sense of danger by a naked teenager, the 27-year-old officer fires the fatal shot at Collar.
The investigators have reportedly found Collar was under the influence of drugs. Officers are of the opinion that he must have consumed LSD at a music festival and he was having a meltdown when he approached the police station.
Beasley said that Collar's kin have pulled up the University for the way they train police in dealing with such circumstances.
