‘No way that dude can be alive.’ Videos show Central Kentucky police shooting suspect
Friday’s shooting at a Georgetown McDonald’s, in which officers shot and killed what they said was an armed carjacking suspect, appears to have been caught on video.
The shooting happened Friday morning in a McDonald’s parking lot, according to Kentucky State Police, after the suspect tried to flee police by breaking into a vehicle. Police said the man pointed a gun at officers before shots were fired. The man was later identified as 31-year-old DeShund Tanner.
A video posted to YouTube by Louis Browning shows at least nine officers on scene, and more than a dozen shots can be heard. Tanner, who can’t be fully seen in the video, appears to be on the ground next to a car after the shots are fired.
Browning told WKYT, the Herald-Leader’s reporting partner, that he first saw Tanner when he was trying to get into a locked car. When he couldn’t get in, he went up to two people in another car and ordered them to get out, Browning said. The people inside got out of the car.
“Once they passed Mr. Tanner the police started hollering at him and opened up fire on him for the first time,” Browning said to WKYT. “I caught the second round of shots on video.” Browning also said he heard one officer yell “drop the firearm.”
One officer can be seen reloading his gun when the shooting stops. He proceeds to jump on the hood of the car. Once the shots stopped, officers continued aiming at Tanner for over two minutes before closing in on him. Officers and paramedics were still tending to Tanner on the ground when Browning’s video ended several minutes later.
“There’s no way that dude can be alive,” Browning can be heard saying in the video.
Browning said in the video description that he didn’t start recording until after the first round of shooting happened.
Browning’s video, which contains graphic content and explicit language, can be seen on YouTube.
Lillie Dunagan, who said she is Tanner’s aunt, wants police to release video footage “of when they started to follow him until the end of what happened at McDonald’s.” Dunagan said she doesn’t think the “entire truth of what happened” has been shown.
Georgetown Police Chief Michael Bosse told the News-Graphic in Georgetown that officers fired a second round of shots at Tanner when he pointed the weapon at an officer despite being wounded.
Police can be heard yelling “put the gun down” in another video posted to TikTok by Tyler Newell. The yelling came after several shots were fired, according to Newell’s video. Georgetown police said Friday that Tanner was trying to steal a car at gunpoint during the altercation.
Newell’s video, which features explicit language and gunfire, can be seen on TikTok. The video went viral after being posted, and had 12.2 million views Wednesday morning.
The shooting was being investigated by the state police Critical Incident Response Team, an agency which frequently investigates shootings committed by law enforcement officers around Kentucky. State police said Friday they wouldn’t release further information on the shooting until “vital witnesses have been interviewed and pertinent facts gathered.”
The names of the officers involved in the shooting weren’t immediately released, but Georgetown police did say those officers had been placed on administrative leave.
Georgetown police on Wednesday declined to comment any further on the shooting.
