Rookie SF cop out of a job after fatal shooting
(KTVU) San Francisco - Police body-cam video shows the moment rookie San Francisco police Officer Christopher Samayoa fired through the window of a police car, killing suspect 42-year-old Keita O'Neil.
Now, that officer is out of a job.
"Unconscionable. It should not have taken place. And this is a young man who is dead who should not be dead, based on the careless, reckless acts of a police officer," said John Burris, a civil-rights attorney who has filed a lawsuit on behalf of O'Neil's family.
O'Neil was a carjacking suspect who led police on a chase that ended in a public housing project in the Bayview. Samayoa was the passenger in the police car.
At the time of the December shooting, Samayoa was only his fourth day of field training after graduating from the police academy.
The officer's body-cam video shows Samayoa drawing his weapon as the police car is moving. Within seconds, the officer shoots O'Neil once from inside the police car, shattering the window. O'neil was unarmed.
Burris said the officer acted recklessly and agreed with the department's decision to release him from the force.
"It's shocking, that he would actually shoot through a window," Burris said. (O'Neil) was coming forward on the side, and the officer puts him in his sights, follows him, and then shoots through the window."
O'Neil was suspected of shoving a state lottery worker to the ground at a Potrero Hill store, grabbing her keys and carjacking her minivan with lottery tickets inside.
Police officials would not give a reason for letting officer Samayoa go. In fact, they don't have to, when it comes to probationary officers.
But in e-mail to officers, police union president Martin Halloran blasted the department's decision. He wrote, "By all appearances, it was to seek political coverage from an OIS (officer-involved shooting) that some in the political arena, the media and the small fraction of naysayers, deem to be controversial or 'not by the numbers' - all based on 8 seconds of video."