Officers in New Jersey who responded to a mental health call last month told a woman: “We don’t want to hurt you. We want to help you.” Moments later, she was fatally shot.
New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin on Friday released body camera videos from the July 28 encounter outside an apartment in Fort Lee, where Victoria Lee was fatally shot in the chest by a police officer. The officer, Tony Pickens Jr., was among several from the Fort Lee Police Department to respond to the apartment early that morning, after Lee’s brother called 911 to report his sister was experiencing a mental health episode. In a subsequent call, he told a 911 dispatcher she was in possession of a “foldable” knife.
The videos, from four body-worn cameras, show Lee, 25, moving toward the officers and holding a large water jug before she is shot. The officers shouted at her to “drop the knife,” though it is not clear in the videos if she is holding one.
The attorney general’s office, which is investigating Lee’s killing, said a knife was recovered, but did not address whether Lee was holding it when she encountered police.
Lee’s family has called the police’s response “unnecessarily aggressive” and said Lee was holding only the five-gallon water jug when she was shot. The police department has referred requests for comment to the attorney general’s office. When reached by an NBC News reporter on Friday, Pickens hung up the phone.
Before the shooting, according to the body camera videos, officers repeatedly demanded that Lee open the door. She told them to go home and at one point threatened to stab an officer if he broke the door down.
Pickens, the first officer to arrive at the apartment’s door, initially encountered Lee’s brother, who told him that Lee was in a bedroom and had a knife, according to the bodycam video. Pickens told him that if his sister had a knife, she was going to hurt someone.
The officer pushed open the apartment door and was met by Lee and her mother, who was holding a barking dog. Lee’s mother told the officer multiple times, “Don’t come in.” Lee told him to “close our f—— door” and shut it. Before she shut the door, Lee can be seen pointing her finger at Pickens and also tells him not to come in.
As Pickens talked with Lee’s brother outside the apartment door, Lee shouted: “Who told a motherf—— pig like you to open my door?” according to the videos.
Several more officers later arrived on the scene and told Lee’s brother, who said he did not have a key to open the door, that they needed to enter the apartment.
Pickens told Lee through the door that he was going to break the door down. She responded: “Go ahead. I’ll stab you in your f—— neck.”
She also told the officers, “Shoot me if you want to,” to which an officer responded: “We don’t want to shoot. We want to help you.” Lee shouted: “Go home, pig!”
The officers gathered outside the apartment and discussed who would “go lethal” and “less lethal.” Pickens agreed to “go lethal,” according to his body camera video. He then said, “We’re going to break the door down, ma’am.” One of the officers said that they would normally “barricade and wait” but, because someone else was in the apartment, they needed to access it.
Pickens shouted, “Open the door,” while other officers shouted, “Drop the weapon” and “We’re going to break the door,” as Pickens breached it. When the door opened, Lee and her mother were at the door and Lee was holding a jug of water. It’s unclear whether she also was holding a knife. The family has said she had dropped it.
As Lee approached the officers, Pickens fired a single shot. Multiple officers can be heard on the body camera videos yelling, “Drop the knife.”
After Lee was shot, the officers pulled her into the entryway of the apartment and rendered aid.
She was later pronounced dead at a hospital.
In addition to body camera video, on Friday the attorney general also released Lee’s brother’s calls to 911, in which he requested an ambulance be sent to bring his sister to a hospital. In his second 911 call, the brother asked the dispatcher whether he could cancel the call. The dispatcher told him that he could not since it was a mental health call and said that the officers would arrive momentarily. The dispatcher asked him why he wanted to cancel the call and he told her that Lee was holding a foldable knife but was not trying to cut anyone.
Prior to the video’s release, Lee’s family said that she was not and had never been violent, including during previous mental health episodes. They also said that they had made mental health calls to 911 in the past and that the 911 responders had always been understanding of her fragile mental state and worked with the family “to facilitate de-escalating the situation and transporting Victoria to the hospital.”
Henry Sukjin Cho, the family’s attorney, declined to comment. He previously told NBC News that he and Lee’s family would view the body camera videos Friday morning, before its release to the public. Lee was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2017 and had been managing it through various activities including work, travel and music, her family said.
Following the release of the videos, Stop AAPI Hate and AAPI New Jersey said in a statement that the police response was “unjust and unwarranted.”
The organizations said Lee’s family “repeatedly asked police not to enter the apartment, but officers forced the door open and shot Victoria within seconds, without adequate efforts to de-escalate and prioritize non-lethal tools.”
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