Body camera video was released this week of a March 16 police shooting that killed an Illinois man and the 4-year-old boy he was holding hostage.
Macomb police released the edited video Monday after a special prosecutor said he had found no basis to charge the officers involved, whom the police department identified as Lt. Nick Goc and Officer Korri Cameron.
The officers were placed on leave, a standard procedure.
The shooting stemmed from a domestic violence incident at an apartment in Macomb on March 16. Family members identified the child who was killed as Terrell Marshawn Miller.
His mother, Keianna Miller, remembered him as a “smart” and “amazing” child who loved Spider-Man.
“He was my pride and joy,” she said. “I know if he would have had a chance to grow up, he would have changed this world.”
Goc and Cameron responded to the residence just after 10 p.m. after police received multiple 911 calls, the police department said. One caller had said they believed they heard gunshots, it said.
The officers found blood smeared on the wall of the building’s stairwell, the body camera video shows. Police knocked on the apartment’s door, announced their presence and ordered the occupants to open up, police said.
After the officers heard a woman screaming for help and saying, “he’s stabbing me,” they forced entry into the apartment, police said.
The woman is seen in the video running into a living room area. She tells the officers that her son is in another room, the video shows. The child is heard screaming.
“The officer orders the female with injuries out of the home to safety,” police say in the narrated body camera video. “What happens next transpires in a matter of seconds.”
The attacker, who is naked and holding a knife in his left hand, dashes into a room and reappears seconds later with a second knife and holding the child hostage.
Police said the man had one knife by the child’s throat and the other by the child’s waist.
One of the officers fired a single shot, the video shows, striking the man and the child. Police rendered aid and called for medical personnel, but the man and the child died at the scene, police said.
Miller said she had arrived home after visiting family to find her boyfriend, Anthony George, intoxicated, authorities said. She said she put her son to bed and tried to get George to go to bed so he could “sleep it off,” they said.
“He comes in the room … and he leans in like he’s going to kiss me and he said, ‘If I can’t have you, nobody can,'” she said, according to authorities. “And then he pulled the knife out and put it to my throat.”
Authorities said Miller said that she tried to talk to George, hoping to calm him down but that it did not work. She said he raped her and took the knife and began “cutting my back,” according to authorities.
Terrell, who heard the commotion in his mother’s room, knocked on the bedroom door, they said, adding that Miller told them George told her to put Terrell back to bed.
Miller told authorities that, seeing an opportunity to escape, she grabbed her son and fled out a back door of the apartment. She said George heard her trying to flee when Terrell tripped down the stairs, authorities said.
Miller was reported to have said George came after them and began stabbing her in the hallway of the building as she screamed for help. She said he then dragged her back into the apartment, authorities said.
Police arrived a short time later.
Authorities said in a March 18 news release that the man had refused to comply with multiple commands to drop his weapon and that police were “fearing for their safety” when the officer fired.
But attorney Marleen Suarez, who is representing Miller, questioned why police did not try to de-escalate the situation.
“There was no de-escalation, no negotiations,” she said at a news conference Monday. “I find it hard to believe that in the heat of that moment, he did not stop and think. I don’t know what made him think he could make that shot.”
Suarez said the shooting happened about 16 seconds after police forced entry into the apartment. She said the officer’s bullet hit Terrell in the head and struck George in the neck.
Keianna Miller “told them, she was adamant as she was being taken out of the apartment, her baby, her son was back there,” Suarez told reporters. “So they were well aware there was a child back there in his bedroom.”
The shooting was investigated by the Illinois State Police and then turned over to the McDonough County State’s Attorney’s Office. The state’s attorney’s appellate prosecutor determined that the officers would not be charged.
In a letter to the county state’s attorney on July 8, Special Prosecutor Jonathan H. Barnard said that after having reviewed evidence, he found “that there is no basis for any criminal action or prosecution that is supportable under the facts of this case against any of the officers involved in this tragic accident,” NBC affiliate WGEM of Quincy reported.
Illinois State Police directed questions to the county state’s attorney’s office and the appellate prosecutor, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Miller, who sustained multiple stab wounds, said the officer who fired the weapon “needs to go to jail.”
An internal police investigation continues. The officers could not be reached for comment at phone numbers listed for them.
Suarez said she plans to sue, saying the family believes “the police officer acted recklessly.”
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