This article is more than 6 years old

This article is more than 6 years old

Police officers who opened fire while disrupting a robbery at a fast-food restaurant killed a crew member with the longrunning TV show Cops as well as the suspect, who was armed with a pellet gun that they thought was a real handgun, authorities in Omaha have said.

The suspect fired from the pellet gun before officers returned fire, Omaha police Chief Todd Schmaderer said at a news conference. He said witnesses and officers thought the robbery suspect’s Airsoft handgun looked and sounded real. They discovered later that it fired plastic pellets.

Cops is a Fox reality TV show that depicts law enforcement officers in action. According to its website the show has been filmed in at least 140 US cities and three foreign countries.

Executives with Langley Productions said this was the first time one of their crew members has been fatally shot while filming.

The suspect, whom police identified as identified as 32-year-old Cortez Washington, was struck by the officers’ gunfire but fled outside of the restaurant before collapsing. Officers continued firing on the suspect as he exited the restaurant and that was when the Cops crew member, 38-year-old Bryce Dion, was struck, said Schamaderer.

Dion had been wearing a bulletproof vest but a single bullet that hit his arm “slipped into a gap in the vest” and went into his chest, Schmaderer said.

“My concern with my officers is that they are taking this very hard,” Schmaderer said. “Bryce was their friend.”

Schmaderer said video captured by the cameraman who was with Dion showed the chaotic situation in the restaurant. Police released still shots from the video showing a hooded and masked person pointing what looks like a gun at police.

Schmaderer said police would not release the full video but it would be part of the grand jury investigation into the shooting.

Schmaderer said Washington had a lengthy criminal record, including an accessory to robbery conviction from Missouri for which he was on parole. He moved to Nebraska in September 2013 and his parole was due to expire in June 2017.

Schmaderer said the incident began when one of the officers, on his way to another reported robbery, called to request backup for the robbery at the Wendy’s. The Cops crew members were with two officers who responded to that request.

When police entered the restaurant and confronted the suspect, Dion, who was the sound operator, got separated from the cameraman, Schmaderer said.

In 2010 a TV crew for the A&E reality show The First 48 recorded a Detroit police raid in which a seven-year-old girl was accidentally killed by an officer. That incident highlighted concerns about whether TV cameras influence police behaviour.

Schmaderer on Wednesday said he believed the video of Tuesday’s shooting showed the officers reacted properly.

Schmaderer said he accepted the request from Cops to film in Omaha in the name of transparency. But he also expressed regret at the outcome.

“Personally I will live with this forever,” Schmaderer said. “If I’d have known that this would happen, of course I wouldn’t have done it.”

Langley Productions’ president, John Langley, and executive producer Morgan Langley attended the police news conference in Omaha and said police had acted professionally.

John Langley said the crew had been filming all summer in Omaha and had only one week left when the deadly shooting happened. “Bryce has been with us for seven years,” said Morgan Langley, who hired Dion. “This is very hard for us.”

• This article was amended on 29 August 2014 to remove a tautology from the caption below the video.