Shocking video shows Chicago police officer shooting dead unarmed teenager

A new video posted online appears to show the moment a Chicago police officer gunned down an unarmed 13-year-old boy in a gas station parking lot on Wednesday.

Video, released Friday by Chicago Media Takeout, shows the lanky teenager running from six officers into the Marathon station light before collapsing in front of a gas pump on the sidewalk.

The teenager was taken to hospital in “critical condition” and taken into custody for his alleged involvement in a stolen vehicle that officers were chasing, police said. Police also said no guns were found at the scene and no shots were fired at the police.

Both the Chicago Police Department and the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, which is responsible for investigating the use of force, declined to comment on the video. The Instagram account Chicago Media Takeout, which posted the video, did not respond to requests for comment.

WGN Chicago also released blurry footage that appeared to capture the incident from a different angle.

The events depicted in the latest video echo the account given by Chicago Police Department Superintendent David Brown at a news conference Thursday night.

According to Brown, the teenager fled a vehicle when officers attempted to stop it in connection with a hijack investigation. “Several officers” then followed him on foot to a “gas station lot on the 800 block of North Cicero,” Brown said.

The owner of a Marathon gas station at 801 N. Cicero Ave confirmed to The Daily Beast that video of the incident was captured by his gas station’s camera to match the content and location of the video.

Upon arriving at the gas station, an officer fired a single shot as the teenager turned, according to Brown’s account. Then officers removed the boy, fearing the bullet would cause an explosion at the gas pumps.

It was not immediately apparent from the latest video when the shot was fired or if there was more than one.

The video does not show officers moving the boy, but instead jumps to where the boy appears to be lying many yards from where the original shooting took place as officers crowd around him.

On Thursday night, Police Commissioner Brown said the violence began when officers stopped a silver Honda Accord that Brown claimed was hijacked in the nearby suburb of Oak Park a day earlier. The driver of the vehicle fled and escaped arrest.

The incident is the latest in a string of police shootings of teenagers in Chicago, from 13-year-old Adam Toledo last year to Laquan McDonald in 2014.

Stephanie Kollmann, policy director at Northwestern University’s Children and Family Justice Center, who has researched the data behind carjacking and youth in Chicago, warned against demonizing and criminalizing young black Chicagoans – who city officials publicly blamed for the rise in carjacking became.

Kollmann told The Daily Beast she worries about “glacier-pace” reforms after previous shootings, riots, but also apathy: “That we’re kind of turning into a city that just accepts kids as legitimate targets of police violence.”

When a journalist at Thursday’s news conference compared the shooting to last year’s killing of 13-year-old Chicago native Adam Toledo, Brown said he thought it was “important to look at this as a separate, standalone case.”

On Friday, the officer who fired his gun was relieved of his police powers, according to police reports ChicagoTribune.

Warning: Graphic footage