Surveillance video released Tuesday by a lawyer for the family of Eddie Irizarry, who was shot and killed by a Philadelphia Police officer in Kensington last week, shows that the officer fired multiple shots at him within five seconds of getting out of his cruiser.
The video, captured by a nearby home’s surveillance camera, shows Irizarry driving his Toyota Corolla the wrong way down the 100 block of East Willard Street and quickly parking. A police patrol car then came down the block.
Officer Mark Dial and his partner stopped their cruiser in the middle of the street, then stepped out out of the car, immediately drawing their guns and pointing them at Irizarry’s parked car.
“Show us your hands!” the officers yelled, according to the video.
One of the officers then said, “he’s got a f— knife.”
“I will f— shoot you,” Dial yelled as he ran to the driver’s side of the car.
Almost immediately, Dial shot multiple times at near point-blank range through the driver’s side window. He fired again through the windshield as he ran backward and circled around the car.
Irizarry was seated in the driver’s seat, the windows rolled up. He was shot six times.
“Shots fired, shots fired,” one of the officers said over police radio.
Irizarry’s car doors appeared to be locked, according to the video. The footage shows one of the officers reached inside Irizarry’s driver’s side window, which had been shattered by bullets, to unlock the door. They then pulled his body from the driver’s seat and carried him, by his arms and legs, to their cruiser.
They rushed him to Temple University Hospital, where he died a short time later, at 12:48 p.m.
The family’s attorney, Shaka Johnson, said the Police Department’s initial narrative — that Irizarry fled a traffic stop, emerged from his car with a knife, and then “lunged” at officers — was “an intentional misleading of the public.”
“What about what you just saw could ever be confused as, ‘He got out of the car and lunged at police officers’?” Johnson asked. “That was an out-and-out, flat out lie.”
Johnson said he intended to file a wrongful death lawsuit against Dial and the city of Philadelphia on behalf of the family.
Johnson, a defense attorney who has represented other families of victims of police shootings in the city, said Irizarry’s family had made plans with the City Solicitor’s Office to privately view the officers’ body-worn camera footage Friday afternoon, but the District Attorney’s Office rescinded the offer, citing concerns with how it might affect the ongoing criminal investigation.
The family and their attorneys returned to the block in search of video themselves, Johnson said, and when they came upon a neighbor’s footage, they decided the public needed to view it.