BuzzFeed News has obtained video footage of two police officers in Alabama fatally shooting an unarmed black man, 26-year-old Cameron Massey, in the passenger's seat of a car in October 2013. An attorney for the slain man’s family says the footage refutes the officers' claims that they were facing imminent danger when they opened fire.

The video, which has not been previously released publicly, contains five minutes of footage from the body camera of one of the officers involved in the shooting, Eufaula Police Chief Ralph Conner. Massey died after being shot five times.

“Officers cannot just shoot people based on absolutely irrational perspectives about a scenario,” Mario Williams, the lawyer for the Massey family, told BuzzFeed News. “This was an absolutely unreasonable shooting.”

Massey’s family filed a civil suit against the officers and the department in July 2015. The suit is ongoing. Both officers claim that they fired because they feared Massey was going to injure one of the officers.

Officer John Phillips told investigators that he stopped the car, a black Infinity with a Georgia Disabled Veterans tag, because a confidential informant had told him that a vehicle fitting that description was carrying a load of marijuana through town. Phillips said that he pulled the car over after it made an improper lane change. Later, officers found seven pounds of marijuana in the trunk.

Conner, who fired the first shot, stated in a police report that he pulled the trigger after he saw the car dragging Phillips, who had reached in through the driver’s side window to grab Massey. Phillips, who fired four times, told the Alabama Bureau of Investigation that he feared for his life because he did not know who fired the first shot and because he worried that he would get run over by the car if it continued to roll forward.

“The gun shot, I thought that’s him gonna kill me,” Phillips said in a taped interview with the Alabama Bureau of Investigation three days after the shooting, which BuzzFeed News has obtained.

The release of the footage comes at a time of heightened scrutiny for police officers over the issue of lethal force. Protests have followed in the wake of videos showing officer-involved fatalities in Staten Island, Cleveland, Beavercreek, North Charleston and Chicago. As in those cases, and many others, officers in this case claimed that they acted because they feared for their lives or the lives of their colleagues. And as in many other cases of police shootings, a grand jury declined to indict the officers involved in Massey’s death.

“The officers fired upon Mr. Massey to stop the imminent deadly threat posed by Mr. Massey’s actions, which halted his continued ability to accelerate the vehicle and seriously injure or kill the officer being dragged,” Mayor Jack Tibbs said in an April 2014 statement following the conclusion of the grand jury hearing, which had been led by a special prosecutor and lasted two days.

Massey’s family has argued that the officers exaggerated the danger they faced because Massey was unarmed, and both officers were standing beside the car, rather than in front or behind it. One witness, Garrick Hall, stated in a court declaration, "Phillips had control of his body the entire time as the car was moving forward. At no time did I see Officer John Phillips fall to the ground or appear as if he was falling to the ground." And the car, which had stopped in the dirt driveway of the auto body shop, had no clear path to escape, the family’s suit states: the road ahead led into the auto body shop’s parking lot and police cruisers blocked the exit behind.

“It was the officer who was reaching inside the the car,” said Kenneth Glasgow, a spokesperson for the family. Massey “was on the passenger's side even up to his death. He was still in his seat belt with both feet on the floor.”

Footage from Conner’s body camera shows Conner pointing his gun at Massey before the car moved and then firing when it rolled forward.