Shortly after midnight on Tuesday, July 5, Alton Sterling was standing outside the Triple S Food Mart. Two police officers pulled into the parking lot to investigate an anonymous call alleging that a black man in a red shirt standing outside the store had threatened the caller with a gun. Minutes later, Sterling, who fit the caller’s description, was subdued by the officers and shot to death. From the time of the shooting until early that Tuesday evening, coverage of the incident was limited to local media, and there were no mentions of cell phone footage.

Chris LeDay

Atlanta resident and Baton Rouge native

The first I heard about Alton’s shooting was on my Channel 9 Twitter feed early Tuesday morning. I immediately screenshotted it and posted it on my Instagram. People started commenting on it, and an old classmate of mine told me that they knew a girl who had shot video of the shooting, and he knew where to find the video at. He sent it to me in my inbox. You see Alton with his hands in the air, and you see him confused. You see the cop tackle him and wrestle him down, and then you see the other cop put a knee in his chest and pull out the gun and shoot him. That night I put the video on my Instagram, my Twitter, my Facebook. Don Cheadle retweeted it. Shaun King from the Black Lives Matter movement reposted it.

BREAKING: 9News has a crew on scene at what witnesses describe as a deadly officer-involved shooting on N Foster. pic.twitter.com/DK2v3GHQ0J — WAFB (@WAFB) July 5, 2016

Shaun King

Journalist and activist

I was at Ikea in Atlanta with my family, and I kept getting texts and social notifications telling me I had to watch this video out of Baton Rouge. It was still being shared in relatively small circles. So I watched it, and as I watched it, I thought: “How do I pretend in front of my wife and kids that I did not just see a grown man get shot?” His name wasn’t trending yet, but I felt that people needed to see it and understand it, so I posted on Twitter.

Furious. The despicable Baton Rouge police murder of #AltonSterling – a 37 y/o Black man who was selling CD's. pic.twitter.com/x2wNtndLqB — Shaun King (@ShaunKing) July 6, 2016

Julia Craven

Reporter for the Huffington Post, the first national outlet to cover the shooting

I was sitting in my living room, and my partner said to me, “Don’t watch this video, it’s terrible.” He explained there was a video floating around Twitter of a black man being shot by police, and I explained to him that, actually, I had to watch that video: It was my job. I could not find anything on the story outside of local papers, and I had a gut feeling that I needed to write about it. I quoted The Advocate’s fantastic reporting of the crime scene and the early protests, and I threw in Shaun King’s tweet about the discovery of the video. The whole thing was so … brutal that I knew it was going to pick up steam. I always find it interesting that we don’t pick things up until we have video.

Arthur “Silky Slim” Reed

Local activist

First time I watched that video on Tuesday, I thought, “Well, it’s a little grainy. Wish we had something better.”

Michael “A.V.” Mitchell

Local activist

That first night after Alton died, when the community realized what was going on after watching the video on social media, I went over to the Triple S. People were just standing outside, not knowing what to do.

Cleve Dunn Jr.

Local activist

People just showed up. There wasn’t even a call to action. People just showed up.

Gary Chambers

Local activist

On Tuesday night I was doing a Facebook Live interview with Abdullah, the owner over at the Triple S. I was asking him to tell me what happened, and that’s when he showed me his video. He hadn’t shown it publicly, and when I saw it, I was like, “Man, this second video gonna change everything.” Because it was so vivid. You see the blood pumping out of Alton’s chest.

Abdullah Muflahi

Owner of the Triple S

It had been a smooth night. Quiet. Around midnight, five minutes before the cops showed up, Alton was in here, and me and him were talking. He didn’t seem angry, didn’t seem mad. We were just laughing and joking around. We were good friends.

When I saw the cops pull up, I walked outside to see what’s going on. By the time I got outside, they were grabbing him, trying to throw him on top of a car. He was asking what he did wrong. He never went for his gun. He never put his hand in his pocket. He was asking them, “What did I do wrong? What’s going on? Why are you guys doing this?” I didn’t start recording on my phone till I seen them tackle him on the floor. I was up close, and I was like, “Maybe my video will help out somehow with his case when he goes to court.” I didn’t tell the police about the recording, because I knew they would confiscate it. I knew that the public needed to see what happened.

Abdullah Muflahi, owner of store where Alton Sterling killed in BR, describes seeing shooting by officer pic.twitter.com/08ABnQwr6a — Maya Lau (@mayalau) July 5, 2016

Ted James

Member of the Louisiana House of Representatives

The second video is what really tipped the scale. There had been demonstrations outside the Triple S all day and night, but they were pretty small. With the second video, the crowds started getting larger. More pastors were getting involved. More community organizers got involved. The anger just intensified. The video was just so rough: unarmed guy, tackled, tased, hands pinned down. I only watched it once. I couldn’t watch it a second time.

Protestors over police shooting of Alton Sterling—including elected officials & NAACP leaders—chanting on N Foster. pic.twitter.com/sHpyFbZW0s — Bryn Stole (@brynstole) July 5, 2016

Jonny Dunnam

Spokesperson, Baton Rouge Police Department

When the cell phone videos came out, we knew the public perception was not going to be great for the police. Ever since Ferguson, you have to be aware that anytime you have officer-involved shootings—and unfortunately, if it’s a white officer in the shooting of an African American citizen—it’s going to make news, especially if there’s video.

Mike Edmonson

Head of the Louisiana State Police

Those police officers will have to explain their actions. Period. We saw what we saw. There’s much more to be seen out there. There’s the body cameras that fell off, but they were still recording sound.

Dunnam

In this case we have a lot of camera footage—from the citizen, the business, in-car cameras. So there will be several different angles to consider, not just the one you see in that video on social media. Let’s take the protests on Airline [the highway, across from the Baton Rouge Police Department, where the protests that began outside the Triple S would migrate later in the week]. I know a lot of the public were livestreaming the protests, but I think that they only got one side of the protests.