A police officer keeps his hand steady and his weapon poised to kill as a man who may have just murdered two people charges.

But the young cop holds his nerve, backing away and refusing to pull the trigger despite the suspect begging him to shoot.

Bodycam video of the terrifying encounter on the streets of New Richmond, Ohio, has won the young cop praise for his refusal to use deadly force.

Jesse Kidder, 26, was chasing Michael Wilcox in his squad car when the suspect got out of his vehicle and started to sprint towards him.

Kidder, an ex-Marine who toured Iraq three times, had been warned by dispatchers that the suspect may attempt “suicide by cop”.

“Shoot me or I’ll shoot you,” Wilcox yells as he runs towards the cop.

The tense situation looks almost certain to turn fatal, but Kidder backs away while yelling back “I’m not going to shoot you”.

“He got towards my face right as I lost balance,” Kidder later told US media.

“I'm thinking, at this point, that if he goes into attack me, that I'll have to use deadly force to defend myself.”

But instead of shooting, Kidder managed to force the suspect to surrender and lie down on the ground so his partner could handcuff him.

Coming amid two high profile cases of US police shooting suspects – one involving a veteran police officer shooting a suspect as he ran away – the video has won Kidder praise from his fellow officers.

“For him to make the judgment call that he did shows great restraint and maturity,” Richmond Police Chief Randy Harvey said.

“This video footage, it eliminated all doubt that this officer would have been justified if in fact it came to a shooting.”

Kidder said he was given the bodycam by a friend after Michael Brown was shot dead by Darren Wilson in Ferguson last year.

“Law enforcement officers all across the nation have to deal with split-second decisions that mean life or death. I wanted to be absolutely sure before I used deadly force.”

Wilcox is currently in custody with a $2m bond.