The Grass Valley Police Department and Nevada County Sheriff’s Office jointly released video Thursday from a New Year’s Day officer-involved shooting, in which police officers and sheriff’s deputies fatally shot and killed 25-year-old man carrying a black airsoft rifle that authorities say was altered to look like a real firearm.

The body-camera and dashboard videos show the man standing on the corner of a residential intersection, refusing dozens of orders by the officers and deputies to drop the gun. He tells the officers that the firearm is not real, but continues to point it at them as they come closer.

The man eventually drops to his knees, but continues to point the weapon at the three deputies who approach him and fatally shoot him after two failed attempts to shock him with a taser.

The victim was identified by the Sheriff’s Office as Gabriel Strickland of Grass Valley. Officers contacted Strickland in the 10000 block of Walker Drive in unincorporated Nevada County on the afternoon of Jan. 1, after the regional dispatch center had received a report of a man walking down Squirrel Creek Road with a shotgun.

The video released by the two agencies shows surveillance footage from the exterior business prior to the confrontation with officers, in which Strickland can be seen walking through a parking lot, resting the airsoft gun on his shoulder with one hand and the other hand in his jacket pocket. The footage is overlaid with audio from the initial 911 call to dispatch, which came in at 12:46 p.m. Jan. 1.

“He’s walking down Squirrel Creek Road with what appeared to be a shotgun,” the caller says. “... He didn’t seem like upset or anything but he definitely was carrying a gun.”

The video then shifts to officers approaching Strickland at the nearby residential intersection of Squirrel Creek Road and Oak Street.

One of the sheriff’s deputies, identified in the video and in an earlier news release as Taylor King, has his gun drawn on Strickland from about 30 feet away, down Oak Street, and is repeatedly ordering him to drop the weapon. A short time later, deputy Brandon Tripp arrives in a sheriff’s vehicle and stops a similar distance away on Squirrel Creek Road, dashcam video from Tripp’s vehicle shows.

The two deputies are joined at the scene a few seconds later by Grass Valley Police Officer Brian Hooper, and moments after that by officers Grube and Ball, whose first names are not given and who did not discharge their firearms, according to the video release.

“You don’t understand that I really don’t give a f---,” Strickland can be heard saying at one point. “I ain’t listening because these m------------ know that I’m not doing nothing wrong.”

After he tells the officers and deputies he is holding an airsoft rifle, one of them responds, “We don’t know that’s a fake gun ... you could have painted that.”

After about three minutes of Strickland refusing to put down the gun, Tripp, Ball and Hooper begin to slowly walk toward him with their guns drawn. As they do so, the man drops to his knees but continues to hold the gun, sometimes pointing it in their direction and at other times having it pointed up toward the sky.

As the approaching officers and deputy get within a few feet of Strickland, the sound of a taser discharging can be heard, but Strickland is not affected.

“A taser was deployed two times,” text in the video explains. “One of the two probes missed on each attempt, making both taser deployments ineffective.”

Strickland points the airsoft rifle at Hooper after Hooper discharges the taser the first time. Seconds later, the law enforcement officers open fire, and about 10 gunshots can be heard.

Just as the shots begin to be fired, Strickland points the airsoft weapon toward Ball, who appears to attempt to disarm the man using a baton before backing away to avoid being shot.

Strickland falls to the ground, and is surrounded by the officers and deputies. The video then ends.

Nevada County Sheriff Shannon Moon in a prepared statement said deputies attempted life-saving measures at the scene. Strickland was taken to Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Nevada County Assistant District Attorney Chris Walsh told the Union newspaper in Grass Valley earlier this month that the airsoft rifle appeared to have its orange safety tip on the muzzle “broken off” prior to the shooting, which made the weapon appear more like a real firearm.

The Sheriff’s Office in a Jan. 2 second said Strickland was known to law enforcement and had made “suicide by cop” statements during previous encounters. He had been out of custody less than 48 hours he’d been booked into jail for a Dec. 27 incident involving possessing a concealed handgun at a laundromat, the Union reported.

The 10-minute video release by the Grass Valley Police Department includes dashboard camera footage and body-worn footage from Ball and Grube, neither of whom fired their weapons.

“Two deputies and an officer,” identified previously by the agencies as Tripp, King and Hooper, “discharged their service weapons and, as is standard practice, were placed on administrative leave,” text near the end of the video reads.

The video ends with text saying the Nevada County District Attorney’s Office is continuing to review officers’ and deputies’ actions to determine if they were lawful. The Sheriff’s Office and Police Department will review the incident internally to determine if officers adhered to policies and procedures.

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