Wild bodycam footage has been released showing the moment a police officer, clinging to a speeding car, shoots a fleeing suspect dead while a terrified child screams in the passenger seat.
The shocking video, released by the Buffalo Police Department in New York on Thursday, captured Officer Ronald Ammerman pulling over 25-year-old Dae’von Roberts for speeding just after midnight Wednesday on Kingston Avenue before the suspect hit the gas in a desperate attempt to getaway from law enforcement.
Ammerman is seen clinging onto the car for dear life, pleading with Roberts to stop, saying, "You’re gonna kill me, bro," as a 6-year-old boy screams in horror.
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As the car speeds away for about 20 seconds, Ammerman fires off several shots as they both tumble to the ground.
"Shots fired! There’s a kid in the car still. He tried killing me," Ammerman shouts into his radio.
Ammerman then rushes over to check on the child, who was uninjured, and grabs hold of him until back up arrives.
Roberts was confirmed dead at a local hospital. A gun was later found inside the vehicle, police said.
Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph Gramaglia said he backed Ammerman’s actions to defend himself from imminent danger.
"I believe that is a justified use of force that occurred the other night," Gramaglia said at a press briefing. "When you take into account the fact that the officer found himself in a grave risk of serious physical injury or death, the use of that level of force is justified by law and I do believe that that is a justified use of force in this case."
"These situations, they don’t evolve in a classroom, they don’t evolve in a training facility." Gramaglia said. "This is real life, there’s not a lot of control the way some of these situations go down. We can train for various situations, but when it happens in real life, when there are actual situations, they always happen differently than what they do in a training facility."
Gramaglia said Ammerman and another officer had acted in a professional and jovial manner during the stop, which lasted about nine minutes before Roberts tried to flee.
At the beginning of the video, Ammerman approaches the driver’s side of the car and tells Roberts he is being pulled over for excessive speed and for having tinted windows.
Ammerman asks Roberts to pull down the rear tinted window, which he does, revealing a child's car seat and a 6-year-old boy in the front passenger seat without a seat belt on. Roberts refers to the child as his "little cousin" and "his nephew" and says he is on the way to dropping him home.
Ammerman then asks Roberts to provide identification, to which he agrees, showing him an out-of-state ID on his phone. Roberts tells Ammerman he is from Georgia and was driving his sister’s vehicle.
However, after checking the ID, Ammerman found the ID was invalid and that Roberts did not have a license in either state.
Ammerman, who has been with the department for seven and a half years, then told Roberts that police would do a different search for his name before the officer appeared to reach into the car and open the door.
That was when Roberts put his foot down and sped off – with Ammerman anxiously clinging onto the door.
In April, Roberts was charged in relation to an alleged shots-fired incident at a memorial for his half-brother Jaylen Griffin, whose body was found at a South Buffalo home in April after he went missing in August 2020, WIVB News 4 reports.
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Roberts was indicted in June and was released under supervision at that time, the outlet reports.
Meanwhile, Ammerman and the other officer on scene, Officer Jonathan Crawford, have both been placed on administrative leave, in line with department policy, Gramaglia said.
"They’re gonna need time to process this," Gramaglia said. "You can’t just come back to work the day after being involved in a situation like that."
