An utterly disturbing video has recently been released showing a Fresno police officer shoot and kill an unarmed 16-year-old as he ran away. As the entire system is set up in a way to protect killer cops — even the ones who murder unarmed children as they run away — the boy’s family is suing because the cop was never held accountable.
ABC affiliate KFSN released the video and it is nothing short of horrifying. The incident unfolded in April 2017 when police stopped the victim, Isaiah Murrietta-Golding, for questioning. Murrietta originally complied with the officer’s orders to back up toward him, as the video shows.
“Backwards,” you can hear an officer order him. “Towards my voice. Down on your knees.”
At that moment, for some unknown reason, Murrietta decided to run. We’ll never know why he ran, however, because the officer made sure he’ll never talk again by putting a bullet in his head.
Murrietta ran out of view of the officer’s body camera as he jumped a fence. However, surveillance footage from the daycare facility in which he ran picked up where the body camera leaves off. Murrietta was running through the yard when Officer Ray Villalvazo takes aim and murders him.
After Villalvazo murdered the unarmed boy, a fellow officer praised him for it.
“Good shot,” the officer said to his fellow cop who had just murdered a child.
Police would justify their actions that day, claiming they believed that Murrietta was armed. Officers said that as the boy ran from them, they “feared for their lives” as he reached for his waistband several times. Despite being completely unarmed, police would go on to claim that a teenage boy, running away, didn’t deserve to live because his hands approached his midsection as he tried to get away from the police.
Former Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer said in March 2018 that an internal police investigation determined that “Sgt. Villalvazo’s actions were within department policy,” as Murrietta “reached into his waistband several times,” including when he looked back at Sgt. Villalvazo the moment before he was shot.
Furthermore, according to the family’s attorney, police didn’t even have a warrant for Murrietta’s arrest that day. They believed he was a suspect in a crime, and they wanted to question him. We’ll never know if Murrietta ever committed that crime because Villalvazo played the role of judge, jury, and, of course, executioner.
Below is the footage. Warning, it’s extremely disturbing.
The video is almost identical to the video of officer Michael Slager killing Walter Scott. In that case, Scott had run from officer Slager, as Murrietta ran from Villalvazo. Slager had opened fire on the unarmed fleeing man and murdered him as officer Villalvazo did to Murrietta. Like Scott’s murder, Murrietta’s murder was captured on video.
Nevertheless, unlike Ray Villalvazo, Michael Slager was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the murder of Walter Scott.
It’s a travesty of all that is just that Villalvazo killed someone’s unarmed child on video, as he ran away, and won’t face so much as a slap on the wrist. That’s what we call “justice” in the land of the free.
COMMENTS