ATLANTA — The Atlanta Police Department has released body camera footage from a deadly police shooting outside a Buckhead restaurant two years later.
An officer shot and killed 22-year-old Nygil Cullins outside Fogo de Chao off Piedmont Road on May 18, 2022.
Investigators said Cullins was a former employee and shot a security guard. Cullins’ parents said he was suffering from a mental crisis at the time of the incident, and his mother called for help.
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His family and their attorneys have been calling for two years for police to release the entire body-camera footage from the night their son died. Cullins’ family recently filed a federal lawsuit, claiming their son should not have died that night.
They said that they called for mental health assistance, which arrived too late, and accused the restaurant of falsely reporting events to summon the police, leading to what they describe as excessive force.
APD released the body camera footage on Monday afternoon.
Channel 2′s Michael Doudna reviewed parts of the over two-hour-long footage, which totals 18 gigabytes of data, to get a better sense of what happened that night.
The video shows Cullins sitting at the restaurant’s bar for an extended period of time and putting his feet up on the counter.
Several staff members appear to address Cullins before two officers arrive and point guns at him. Cullins runs and the officers follow him. Moments later, officers shot him multiple times, then paused and shot him several more times in the restaurant’s entryway.
“You used 10 shots. Five and then a pause, and then five more,” a family spokesperson said. “So there won’t be any closure., can’t until we get justice, until we see transparency until policies get changed.”
The family has issued a statement, saying:
“The family hopes this marks the first step towards transparency by the Atlanta police. After a two-year struggle, they believe this tape will help clear Nigel Cullins’s name and initiate the process of seeking justice and accountability from the Atlanta police. They eagerly anticipate the tape’s release and plan to address the next steps in the case tomorrow.”
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