Scarfing down a cheeseburger as he steered his SUV, O'Shae Terry looked up and saw the flashing police lights behind him.

An Arlington officer had spotted Terry's expired registration. Terry, 24, pulled over. He had his friend in the car, and drugs and a gun concealed in a backpack in the far rear seat. What began as a routine traffic stop Sept. 1 spiraled after a second officer, Bau Tran, arrived and the police announced they would search the car because they smelled marijuana.

Within 12 minutes of being stopped, Terry was dead.

Tran shot Terry as he tried to drive away with Tran on the running board and his hand in the partly-rolled-up window, a body camera video shows. Tran's attorney said the officer's actions were appropriate and that he jumped on the SUV to save others on the busy road because he believed Terry might have been impaired.

Three experts who reviewed videos of the encounter said Tran's decision to shoot might have been reasonable because he was in danger. But they differed on whether the officer unnecessarily placed himself in peril in the first place.

Terry's family and Arlington's black community, which has grown increasingly distrustful of police there in recent years, remain raw, wondering why the shooting happened. They are skeptical that authorities will do anything to hold the officer — whose name wasn't released until seven weeks later — accountable.

"It appears the outcome has been predetermined despite the officer's highly questionable tactics," said Alisa Simmons, president of the Arlington NAACP.

Sherley Woods, mother of O'Shae Terry, who was shot and killed Sept. 1 by an Arlington police officer during a traffic stop, holds a photo of her son at her home in Forest Hill. (Rose Baca / Staff Photographer)

Terry's grieving mother, Sherley Woods, said she was outraged that Tran has not only avoided punishment so far, but is also collecting a paycheck on desk duty.

"When officers do something wrong and unjust, it's only right that they be prosecuted the same way we'd be prosecuted," Woods said.

What happened

The morning of Sept. 1 started out fairly routine for Terry, a dog lover and former football player at Oscar Dean Wyatt High School in Fort Worth.

He picked up his childhood friend, Terrence Harmon, 24, in Fort Worth to see a truck for sale in Arlington. Terry made money buying, fixing and selling vehicles, Harmon said.

Terrence Harmon spoke to the media during an interview on Oct. 17 in Irving. Harmon was in the passenger seat when his friend O'Shae Terry was fatally shot by an Arlington police officer during a traffic stop. (Rose Baca / Staff Photographer)

They stopped at a Sonic and bought two No. 3s, bacon double cheeseburgers. Then Terry steered out of the drive-in and came to a traffic light, before a police officer pulled them over in the 2400 block of California Lane, a busy street, at 1:44 p.m.

Officer Julie Herlihy, a five-year veteran, chatted with Terry for nine minutes until her backup, Officer Tran, arrived. Then Herlihy broke the news: She smelled marijuana and she'd have to search the vehicle, the videos show.

Terry acknowledged that he had a "doobie," and that he had smoked pot in the vehicle earlier.

Herlihy returned to her SUV to use her computer. Tran stood by the passenger window.

Tran, who has a wife and child and studied at the University of Memphis, has been on the force for eight years, according to his lawyer and state licensing records. Six weeks earlier, he completed a course on de-escalation mandated by the Texas Legislature to address racial disparities in law enforcement.

Tran tried to keep Terry talking.

"The way I look at it, man, it's still not legal in Texas yet," Tran said of marijuana. "Some other states, they make it legal, but we don't make the law, you know what I'm saying? So as long as y'all be cool with us, cooperate with us, you know, things gonna be cool."

Terry looked forward, arms crossed.

"We just have to do what we have to do," Tran said. "So that's basically it."

Terry looked at Tran, then the window suddenly rolled up. That was Terry's doing, Harmon said.

"Hey, hey, hey, hey!" Tran said as he put his left hand on top of the window pane, while reaching his right hand inside the SUV.

"Hey, stop!" Tran yelled, as he stepped onto the SUV's running board.

"I ain't going nowhere," Terry said, as he turned his key in the ignition. The engine started.

Tran gripped the passenger window pane with his left hand and pointed a gun with his right hand into the vehicle, which began moving. Tran pulled the trigger. Terry was shot four times, an autopsy would show.

Someone screamed.

Harmon yelled, "Stop the car, man!"

The car crossed into the opposite lane of traffic and coasted onto the sidewalk, next to a residential fence.

Hearing the gunshots as she sat inside her patrol vehicle, Herlihy muttered an expletive. The incident unfolded in seconds.

The next day, Arlington police posted photos to Facebook of what they found in a backpack in the far rear row of Terry's SUV: a Glock handgun with a 29-round extended magazine, 1.09 pounds of marijuana and 7 grams of ecstasy pills. Harmon said he didn't know why those items were in his friend's SUV.

Arlington Police Department (Facebook screenshot)

'Pretty basic police training'

Law enforcement experts who reviewed the videos for The Dallas Morning News largely agreed that Tran was in danger when he pulled the trigger, so it may have been reasonable to use deadly force.

But they differed on whether Tran should have stepped on the running board and put his hand in the car in the moments before the shooting.

"I'm sure in hindsight, he would've done it differently," said Peter Moskos, a former police officer who teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. "It's a dumb move, but I can see how it's a natural instinct: 'Hey, he's rolling up the window and I don't want him to roll up the window.'"

Seth Stoughton, a former police officer who teaches at the University of South Carolina School of Law, said Tran should've stepped back, watched the SUV drive off, obtained an arrest warrant for the driver and had him arrested later.

Officers already got Terry's name and birth date during the traffic stop. And at that time, he wasn't believed to be a violent felon. A chase could increase the danger to the public.

"Not reaching into vehicles, not putting yourself in a situation where you could be dragged by a vehicle, is pretty basic police training — and common sense," Stoughton said. "This is like walking up to a person who's swinging a knife around and shooting them because they're swinging a knife at you."

Over the years, police trainers have increasingly advocated for letting suspects go and pursuing them after, to avoid a deadly confrontation — especially if the suspected crimes are minor, said William Terrill, a criminology professor at Arizona State University. But, he said, many officers feel conflicted about what society wants.

For instance, Dallas police instituted a policy in recent years that limits chasing nonviolent suspects. The stated goal of the policy is "protection of human life," but officers have complained that the rules have hamstrung their efforts to catch bad guys.

"A lot of officers say, 'Where does it end? Is it OK to drive around with an expired plate and use drugs? If you don't want cops to intervene and take action in those cases, then change the law,'" Terrill said. "The police are in an impossible mandate where the expectations are, in many ways, completely unrealistic."

'We're at war'

Police shootings have come under more scrutiny in recent years as the Black Lives Matter movement has taken hold. Just two days before Terry's death, former Balch Springs Officer Roy Oliver was convicted of murder for shooting 15-year-old Jordan Edwards, a passenger in a car that, evidence showed, was driving away from officers.

Simmons, the NAACP president, said black residents in Arlington already felt targeted by police, but the Terry shooting has heightened their distrust.

The fatal 2015 shooting of 19-year-old Christian Taylor — a college football player and unarmed burglary suspect — by a rookie officer prompted outrage. The officer, Brad Miller, was quickly fired, and Arlington paid $850,000 in a settlement to Taylor's family. But Miller wasn't indicted.

Arlington also paid $1.25 million to the family of Jonathan Paul, 42, an inmate who died in 2015 after jailers restrained and pepper-sprayed him. Two ex-jailers pleaded guilty to misdemeanors after investigators found they neglected to give Paul proper first aid while he lay motionless on the floor.

"Clearly the settlements paid out in the Jonathan Paul case, and subsequently the Christian Taylor case were not consequence enough for city leaders," Simmons said, adding that she hopes Arlington leaders will now take more seriously the need for reforms.

"Every day, all night long, I keep seeing my son's face," says Sherley Woods, mother of O'Shae Terry, who was shot and killed Sept. 1 by an Arlington police officer during a traffic stop. "The police officer took away my son's life before he could experience getting a wife or becoming a father and having a family." (Rose Baca / Staff Photographer)

Simmons called for establishing a citizens review board to oversee police uses of force. Such a board exists in Dallas, but protesters outraged over recent shootings by police — especially the death of Botham Jean, 26, in his own apartment — have called for strengthening the model that even its chairman called outdated and in need of repair.

Arlington police quickly released dashcam and body camera videos of the Terry shooting, but declined to name Tran as the officer until Oct. 19, seven weeks after Terry's death, citing credible threats to the officer's safety.

Protesters angry about Jean's death also often invoked Terry's name. They carried coffins symbolizing both Terry and Jean during a Sept. 16 protest outside AT&T Stadium in Arlington.

Before the officer's name was publicly released, Deputy Chief Carol Riddle attended an NAACP meeting at a church on Oct. 9. Video of the meeting shows residents stood one by one to express their fears and anger.

"I don't want to be next," said a teen in a red sweatshirt.

"We're at war," said a middle-age man. "We ain't taking this no more."

"What you are saying is that all lives are not equal," said a woman in a cheetah-print dress.

Riddle provided little information in response to the audience's questions. At one point, she declined to summarize the department's procedures related to traffic stops, saying people could file a formal request.

Afterward, Simmons described Riddle's appearance as a "colossal waste of time."

Simmons said police and the district attorney have "a lot of work to do" in proving they can investigate shootings in an unbiased manner. She said the police seemed to defend the officer's actions from the beginning before all the facts were clear.

Simmons also cited the department's Facebook post the day after the shooting saying that investigators found a gun and drugs in the SUV as an effort to paint Terry as a "bad guy who likely deserved to be shot."

A police spokesman, Lt. Christopher Cook, said the department has issued facts. He said the shooting remains under investigation and the officer could face discipline, termination or criminal charges.

Officer Julie Herlihy touches the shoulder of O'Shae Terry, 24, after he reached for something inside his SUV during a traffic stop on Sept. 1. Minutes later, Terry tried to drive off and was fatally shot by another Arlington police officer, Bau Tran. (Arlington police body-worn camera video screenshot)

What now?

Tran will be judged in the legal system by what was going through his head when he shot and whether it was reasonable under the circumstances, said Randall Moore, his lawyer.

"It's easy for us to sit back in hindsight and second-guess somebody, but if you watch that video, you can see that things went south really fast," Moore said. "He did what he thought he had to do to protect the public."

Tran did what he was trained to do, Moore said. He had one second to react after Terry rolled up the window before the vehicle moved, Moore said, so Tran reached into the SUV to try to grab the keys and disable the SUV. But Tran was on the passenger side of the vehicle.

Tran believed that the driver may have been impaired from marijuana and, in fleeing from police, could endanger others on the roads, Moore said. Tran was in a predicament, the attorney said: Had he stood by as Terry drove off and Terry killed an innocent bystander, the officer could be criticized for not trying to stop the vehicle.

Moore said the person who had the most control over the situation was Terry, who could have chosen not to drive away from police.

Lee Merritt, the Terry family's lawyer, said that while Terry was committing a crime by fleeing the scene, he was not endangering anyone and so there was no justification for him to be shot.

"It's not OK to shoot at someone to prevent them from leaving," Merritt said. "That represents a crime — more specifically, murder."

Moore, the officer's attorney, said Tran acted within the law and policy.

But Merritt said police should only use force to stop a fleeing suspect when the suspect is a felon with a known violent history and could pose a threat to the public.

Records show Terry had four convictions from 2014 to 2016: evading arrest, burglary and two counts of possession of marijuana.

Those crimes were nonviolent, Merritt said, and in any case, Tran didn't know anything about Terry.

A grand jury will consider the case in the coming months. Merritt said he doesn't hold out hope that a Tarrant County grand jury will indict Tran.

He said he has little faith in Tarrant County District Attorney Sharen Wilson's willingness to prosecute an officer. Compared with Dallas County, officers in Tarrant County are far less likely to be prosecuted for their uses of force, Merritt said.

"She doesn't indict cops," Merritt said of Wilson. "It's a very slim chance that it will be indicted, although it's clearly criminal."

Lee Merritt, a civil rights attorney who is representing the family of O'Shae Terry. (Rose Baca / Staff Photographer)

Sam Jordan, a spokeswoman for Wilson, said the district attorney is committed to thorough reviews of all shootings by police.

Terry's passenger, Harmon, said Terry had previously said he wanted to avoid going back to jail by turning his life around. He said Terry planned to open a car lot or a car wash.

Now, Terry's family hopes Tran gets fired and locked up. Woods, Terry's mother, said she will never understand why Tran shot her son so many times. She is haunted by what she sees as a grave injustice.

Despite Terry's flaws, his mother said he loved to help people and was always smiling, laughing and joking.

"Every day, all night long, I keep seeing my son's face," Woods said. "The police officer took away my son's life before he could experience getting a wife or becoming a father and having a family."