ATLANTA — The family of a 22-year-old shot and killed by an Atlanta officer at a Buckhead restaurant spoke for the first time on Tuesday since Atlanta police released the body camera footage from the deadly shooting.
An officer shot and killed 22-year-old Nygil Cullins outside Fogo de Chao off Piedmont Road on May 18, 2022.
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Investigators said Cullins was a former employee who had a gun on his waist and that he shot a security guard. Cullins’ parents said he was suffering from a mental crisis at the time of the incident, and that his mother had called for help.
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.
On Tuesday, the Cullins family held a news conference to discuss the video footage.
“To see your son lifeless (emotional) arms dangling…(crying) that’s not how you want to remember your son,” his father Quinten Cullins said.
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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. According to police, restaurant staff called 911 to say Cullins was acting erratically.
Several staff members appear to address Cullins before two officers arrive and point guns at him. Cullins runs and the officers follow him. The video shows Cullins appears to have a gun on his waistband.
Moments later, officers shot him multiple times, then paused and shot him several more times in the restaurant’s entryway.
The full video can be accessed here on Atlanta Police Department’s website. Viewer discretion is advised.
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