133 SHARES Share Tweet

In a recently released boy camera footage shows the events leading up to the fatal police shooting of unarmed Black teen by San Antonio, TX police. The video was obtained by KENS 5 News showed the Oct. 17, 2018 incident that left 18-year-old Charles “Chop” Roundtree, Jr. dead.

Officer Steve Casanova fired the shot that hit Roundtree in the chest that killed him according to the news station. Police officials said the gunfire was actually attended for the teen’s friend, Davante Snowden, who allegedly took a “threatening” stance toward Casanova.

The incident began when the Casanova and two other officers responded to a complaint from Maria Herrera and Esteban Preciado, who was delivering an order of Mexican-style chicken soup to a home on a “troubled” block on the city’s West Side, according to the San Antonio Current.

They told police a man had come out of a nearby house and struck Preciado in the face for parking on his block.

Casanova logged the complaint and went to the home where he had visited 130 times before, including 64 visits that were for drugs and six for gun-related incidents KENS 5 reported. The body-cam footage showed Casanova knocking on the door, which was slightly open before opening it to see Snowden, 18, Roundtree and eyewitness Taylor Singleton sitting in the living room.

Donate $1 to Keep The Black Detour Alive

“What’s up, man?” Casanova asks as he opens the front door. However, the officer doesn’t identify himself as a police officer.

“Hey, who the f–k is this?” Snowden says, when getting up from the couch with one hand tucked in his pants. Then Casanova orders the teen to “lemme see your f—–g hands” before firing two shots into the home.

After saying shots been fired, Casanova and other officers retreat from the property and take up a position across the street. A fellow officer asks what he saw, Casanova replies: “He had a f——g gun and pulled it out.”

Soon after the shots were fired backup arrives and police eventually allow a man who was eating on the porch to crawl out from the front yard. The occupants of the home were then ordered out one at a time with their hands up as they walked backward toward police.

Snowden suffered a gunshot to his backside and was taken to a local hospital for treatment. San Antonio police said the same bullet that injured the teen was the same one that killed Roundtree. The bullet allegedly went through Snowden’s buttocks and into Roundtree’s chest.

Donate $1 to Keep The Black Detour Alive

Singelton recalled things differently and said the shot that hit Snowden had gone into the wall toward a neighbor’s home. Roundtree was killed by another shot from Casanova, she claimed.

“He suffered,” Singleton told KENS 5 at the time of the incident. “I watched him die.”

“It’s messed up because nobody was doing anything,” she went on to say. “And then you have an 18-year-old boy who accidentally gets shot.”

San Antonio Police Chief William McManus called the shooting a “very, very unfortunate, tragic incident.”

“Unfortunately, that person who was just sitting there was killed by a bullet fired at someone who was attempting to use deadly force against police,” he said, later lauding Casanova for his “professional” handling of the situation.

“There was nothing hostile about it and unfortunately the reaction from the individual with the gun was something he should not have done,” the police chief added.

Casanova can be heard giving his account of the incident in the video:

“The front door was like slightly open, so I knocked and it swung open. The guy with the gun was sitting down directly in front of me, there was a female next to him, and another young kid next to him. Like I said, they both kinda matched the description I was given, and he said ‘Who the fuck are you?’ and then he looked at me, and I guess it took him a while to realize that I was an officer, so when he he did that, he goes, ‘Man you can’t fucking-’ and then he kinda stopped what he was doing, and I couldn’t see exactly what was in his waist, because his hand was covering it. Then he kinda moved it slightly and I saw a gun. But he took like two steps towards me, and then he kinda went to the side and he was like lifting his shirt up, so I fired I believe two rounds at him.”

Casnanova was placed on administrative leave following the shooting, but is still employed by San Antonio police.

Roundtree’s family has since filed a wrongful death suit against the city, citing that the teen was unarmed and police failed to give him proper medical attention at the scene.

Read more:

Lonnie Bunch to become first African American to lead the Smithsonian Institution

Copyright ©2019 The Black Detour All Rights Reserved.