The wife of Keith L. Scott has released a video she took on Tuesday afternoon when police fatally shot her husband. The video doesn’t answer the disputed issue of whether Scott was armed or not, but it does make painfully clear that as the standoff unfolded, Rakeyia Scott was all too aware that the police might unleash lethal force. She repeatedly tells the police not to shoot, and that her husband has a traumatic brain injury. From the New York Times transcripts of what happened immediately before the shooting:
OFFICER: Hands up!
RAKEYIA SCOTT: Don’t shoot him. Don’t shoot him. He has no weapon. He has no weapon. Don’t shoot him.
OFFICER: Don’t shoot. Drop the gun. Drop the fucking gun.
RAKEYIA SCOTT: Don’t shoot him. Don’t shoot him.
OFFICER: Drop the gun.
RAKEYIA SCOTT: He didn’t do anything.
OFFICER: Drop the gun. Drop the gun.
RAKEYIA SCOTT: He doesn’t have a gun. He has a T.B.I. (Traumatic Brain Injury).
There have been many distressing videos of police shootings in the last few years, but few are as shocking as watching a wife plead for her husband’s life moments before police take it from him.