Brooks, 47, was killed earlier this month by Harris County Sheriff’s Office deputy Garrett Hardin, who chased the unarmed Black man after Brooks was accused of shoplifting laundry detergent from a Dollar General store. Officials claim Brooks also punched a store clerk as he left the building.

In body-camera footage released by the HCSO, Hardin is seen chasing Brooks before hitting him with a jolt from his stun gun and wrestling him to the ground. Brooks then grabs for the stun gun. After yelling, “I am going to shoot you. Put that down! I will fucking shoot you!” Hardin fires a single, fatal shot into the back of Brooks’s neck.

However, speaking with Houston’s ABC 13 station, Brooks’s family claimed they’d been shown a different cut of the footage and that the video released by the sheriff’s department was deceptively edited to focus on Brooks’s struggle for the Taser and downplay the “assault” on an incapacitated Brooks by Hardin.

“They even edited even further because they saw that there was punching in there. We saw that with our own eyes where the assault took place on Roderick Brooks,” family attorney Sadiyah Evangelista-Karriem told the station. The family is planning to sue the Harris County Sheriff’s Office over Brooks’ death. Hardin, meanwhile, is on administrative leave pending an investigation into the shooting.
Posted by CZ