He Tried to Steal a Car. The Cop Who Killed Him Just Walked.
Last week, body-camera footage was released from the shocking incident in which a North Carolina police officer shot a 29-year-old man several times, stopped to say “shots fired” into his radio, and then shot at him again.
Brandon Combs had fled to the inside of Officer Timothy Larson’s patrol vehicle after allegedly attempting to steal a pickup truck from a Nissan dealership in February. When he died, he left behind a 9-year-old daughter, Allison.
Combs’ mother, Virginia Tayara, had already seen the footage months before. Nevertheless, she told The Daily Beast by text message that the public release caught her off guard.
“Luckily, a friend saw it and warned me before I watched the news,” she said on Thursday, after District Attorney Roxann Vaneekhoven declined to charge Larson in connection with the killing.
“I’m glad it’s out so everyone can see what really happened,” Tayara said. “We expected the Cabarrus County DA to protect the officer. It’s what they do.”
When reached for comment, Caleb Newman, an assistant district attorney in Vaneekhoven’s office, told The Daily Beast, “Whatever questions you may have from that, we just won’t entertain, and we don’t have any further comments because of the media release that’s already been issued.” On Friday, Gov. Roy Cooper announced Vaneekhoven would be retiring at the end of the month.
The video was released by local TV station WSOC-TV one day after Vaneekhoven announced that Larson “did not utilize excessive force” when he shot and killed Combs, and that he did not commit a crime. The shooting was previously reported on by the Charlotte Observer.
Vaneekhoven cited Larson’s ostensibly reasonable fear of the vehicle as a weapon, Combs allegedly looking toward an AR-15 latched inside the cop car, and his inability to see his hands, among other factors.
Larson had already been dismissed by the police department for allegedly lying to investigators—albeit, his attorney Chris McCartan told The Daily Beast, not about the shooting itself, but staffing and other issues involving the police department.
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“I fired Timothy Larson because he made false statements about what happened in the hours before the shooting, and he refused to cooperate with my department’s administrative review,” Concord Police Chief Gary Gacek wrote in a statement to The Daily Beast. He stressed that he asked the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) to take over the probe “to ensure our community had confidence in the criminal investigation.”
“My office wasn’t involved with the SBI’s investigation, or the separate decision made by the District Attorney,” wrote Gacek.
Larson’s lawyer, McCartan, insisted his claims about the department being understaffed would be vindicated.
“Timothy Larson’s candor regarding the actual shooting or any interaction with Mr. Combs has never been in question,” he told The Daily Beast. “Mr. Larson was terminated based on allegations of him making ‘false statements’ regarding staffing by the Concord Police Department during his shift. These allegations are entirely disputed and denied.”
But the details of the shooting and the way it was handled by prosecutors left Combs’ mother, who has filed a lawsuit, and a top policing expert crying foul. They suggested the case was a fresh example of what remains, even in 2022, blanket license for cops to kill people if they claim they were in danger.
“Imminence of the threat is what the case should turn on, and a jury in the civil litigation would decide if the DA’s interpretation of ‘reasonableness’ was correct,” Jeffrey Fagan, an expert on policing at Columbia University Law School, told The Daily Beast.
While the body-camera footage was edited for broadcast by the TV station, and did not include the video portion of the shooting itself, it did show a few of the final moments before Combs is killed. The station obtained the video through a court order.
During the 90-second encounter, then-Officer Larson is seen attempting to order Combs at gunpoint to come out of a pickup truck he was allegedly attempting to steal.
“Take your gun off,” says Combs.
“Wha-why? What are you—What’s going on?” answers Larson, as he holds up his flashlight.
Next, Larson is seen approaching the truck with a taser, but when he cannot pry the door open on this try either, switches to a baton, and then back to a gun after hiding for an unknown amount of time behind another van in the parking lot. (Footage in this time period was only released as part of a news package, not in its entirety.)
That’s when Combs flees from the truck to the Concord PD SUV, and the officer approaches his own vehicle with his gun drawn, standing in front and slightly to the side of the SUV and shining a light on it. When Combs looks down, the video frame is frozen by TV editors. But sound continues to roll.
Then, five shots are heard.
“Shots fired, shots fired!” Larson yells as a radio tone beeps.
Then another shot rings out.
According to DA Vaneekhoven, Larson claimed he had seen Combs “looking down towards the release button for the assault rifle,” latched in between the seats of the patrol SUV. She also noted the 15 commands that went unheeded by Combs, and multiple instances where Larson could not see Combs’ hands.
Larson heard the vehicle’s engine rev, she wrote, leaving the officer “fearing for his life.”
“The police SUV is a deadly weapon that can cause death or serious injury,” she wrote in her press release.
The lawsuit filed by Combs’ mother, Tayara, against the cop and the city contends that her son was “unarmed and posing no threat.”
The complaint also points to the alleged fact that in a later part of the body-camera footage, still unreleased, the “defendant Larson disclosed to the responding officers on the scene that he shot Mr. Combs because Mr. Combs was trying to take his car.”
Meanwhile, Fagan questioned what he called an “obvious conflict” with a local DA investigating a local cop, calling it “another example why special and independent prosecutors are necessary to determine whether criminal charges are warranted.” He pointed out that in many cases, such investigations into deadly force are referred by local prosecutors to the state’s attorney general, thanks in part to years of protests over questionable decisions by local prosecutors to lay off killer cops.
“The threat, if the revving of the engine signaled imminence, was created in part by the officer positioning himself in front of the SUV, not from the weapon in the SUV,” Fagan added.
McCartan, the attorney for Larson, disagreed.
The “obvious conflict” connotation is completely without merit, he said, adding, “Officer protocol and training are law enforcement-based queries. However, the chief law enforcement officer in Cabarrus County has reviewed all evidence and has determined that no criminal process is appropriate.”
Deadly force by police officers is generally considered lawful, or justified, if they have “reasonable belief” of an “imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury,” But the Supreme Court case Tennessee v. Garner, cited by both Fagan and Tayara’s lawsuit, states that officers cannot use deadly force on a fleeing subject unless “the officer has a good-faith belief that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury.”
“We saw the same thing in the Andrew Brown case. It’s the same,” said Tayara’s lawyer, Harry Daniels, referring to the case where a Black man was shot in his car by sheriff’s deputies. Daniels worked that case in another county in North Carolina and recently settled for $3 million.
Vaneekhoven’s press release said she reviewed materials from state investigators, all available video, as well as officer statements. She also consulted the law and “multiple police procedure professionals.”
Even so, the city of Concord is filing for the release of the full video. “Because we know transparency is vital, our city attorney is currently filing a petition with the court to release the same footage to the public,” said spokesperson Lindsay Manson.
Combs struggled with mental illness and addiction, according to his mother, who spoke to The Daily Beast at length in June. But the main thing she remembered about him was that he “just kept trying.”
She recalled fond childhood memories that made her laugh—like how he would refuse to wear a belt and run after his friends in the yard while holding his pants up. And that despite his struggles, he was a “hard worker and a good father.”
“You know he would fall and relapse and he would pick back up and he would go back into treatment and each time he was in treatment he would stay a little longer, a little longer,” Tayara told The Daily Beast. “And you know, I feel like eventually if this hadn’t happened, that Brandon would have made it.”
She also looked to the future, worried about her granddaughter.
“She doesn’t talk about it a lot,” Tayara said. “I think she holds a lot of it in. She’s doing well in school, but I just worry that she’s trying to be—she’s 9—and she tries to be strong and take care of everybody around her. And I’m afraid that she’s trying to be strong for everybody.”
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