‘He’s going to kill her’: Body-cam video reveals tense night but not the shooting
Police body-camera footage from the night an officer fatally shot Delano Williams last August in a northeast Charlotte home doesn’t include video of the actual shooting.
The nearly three dozen videos, obtained Wednesday by the Charlotte Observer, show a woman running out of a house, the sound of gunshots and officers treating an unconscious Williams for gunshot wounds to his back and leg. Blood is seen spewing onto the floor as they use a knife to cut his shirt away.
According to the Mecklenburg County District Attorney’s Office review of the shooting, the police officer shot Williams through a glass sliding door from behind a fence in the backyard, which blocked the camera but captured the sound of the gunshot.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Officer John Juhasz shot and killed the 45-year-old Williams just after midnight on Aug. 2, 2019, when responding to a domestic violence 911 call. Juhasz said he “perceived an imminent, lethal threat” and shot Williams, who was pronounced dead at Carolinas Medical Center.
In November 2019, Mecklenburg County District Attorney Spencer Merriweather determined the shooting was justified.
Police said last year that the 911 caller had said her father was pointing a gun at her aunt. The speaker said her mother was in the house and the 911 operator heard gunshots in the background of the call, police said.
When police arrived at the house on Ernest Russell Court, not far from Mallard Creek Road, they said they heard gunshots coming from inside. Three teenage children were at the house that night, according to CMPD, but all three escaped before police arrived.
What the videos show
The videos provide a detailed look at what transpired the night of the shooting, including officers giving medical aid to Williams, officers sweeping and securing the inside of the house, and family members leaving the house.
One video shows a woman screaming and running out of the house.
“He already shot me in the leg ... (my brother-in-law is) in the living room. He’s going to kill her. He probably already has,” the woman who ran screaming from the house says to the officer.
It’s presumed the woman is talking about Williams’s wife, Keri Williams, who had obtained a protection order against her husband earlier.
Then there is the sound of gunshots: “Suspect down,” is heard in another video after the gunshots.
According to the district attorney’s review of the shooting, Delano Williams had forced his wife and her sister to sit down, threatened to shoot them and then shot the sister in the leg. Both women then tried to wrestle the gun away from Williams and Keri Williams’s sister managed to escape through the front door.
Then, Juhasz said he saw Williams raise his gun in the direction where Keri Williams was sitting and fired his rifle through the sliding glass door, according to the district attorney. Williams fell to the floor but continued to move and Juhasz shot him two more times. Then Keri Williams took the gun, threw it into the backyard, and left through the shattered glass door in the back and encountered a police officer, the district attorney said.
Following the district attorney’s decision, Keri Williams wrote an op-ed in The Observer praising Juhasz’s quick decision making and thanking the police for saving her life.
Video footage shows several officers entering through the front of the home where they found Williams lying on the ground, bleeding from a gunshot wound in his back and right leg.
“Hang in there, OK?” an officer says and they roll him to his side. At one point Williams is carried by three officers outside.
Other officers, guns drawn, go upstairs to see whether there’s anyone else there. The house is empty.
This story was originally published September 24, 2020 at 10:48 AM.
