Black Texas man seen screaming 'I'm scared' as cops point guns at him and shove his 90-year-old grandma
MIDLAND, TEXAS: A disturbing video went viral showing a group of police officers holding an African-American man at gunpoint for running a stop sign and then 'pushing' his 90-year-old grandmother to the ground when she tried to calm down the situation.
The footage was shot on May 16 in Midland, Texas, according to the Midland Reporter-Telegram, and captured the altercation between the city's police department and a man identified as 21-year-old Tye Anders. In a clip shared by Fox News reporter Feliz Romero that has gone viral on Twitter, a group of officers can be seen pointing their guns at Anders even as he begs for them to lower their weapons and shouts, "I'm scared. I'm scared."
His pleas eventually attract the attention of his grandmother, who appears by the end of the clip and walks towards Anders as officers try to detain him. In the ensuing chaos, she falls. Though it is unclear what caused her to lose her balance, a woman who filmed the incident can be heard screaming, "You pushed her!"
While the Midland Police initially refused to release dashcam and bodycam footage of the altercation, the City of Midland released it on YouTube in a bid to clarify the sequence of events and said officers had pursued Anders after he failed to stop at a sign.
You can watch the bodycam footage here:
"[The] vehicle began increasing speed in an attempt to elude [capture]," police said in a statement, adding that Anders did not stop for two blocks until he pulled into the driveway of his home.
They said that when officers issued a verbal directive to the 21-year-old to exit his vehicle and roll down his window, they received no response and that he refused to comply with orders for the next six minutes. "The subject continued to resist and chose not to comply with commands by continuously yelling, 'why you stop me,'" they added.
Anders was eventually charged with one felony count of evading arrest in connection to the incident and Midland District Attorney Laura Nodolf said she plans to "proceed forward in the normal fashion that any other criminal matter submitted to my office would follow."
Anders's lawyer, Justin Moore, said his client was targeted because of his race. "Racial profiling and pretext stops have been at pandemic levels in this country for generations," he said.
"This incident falls within the age-old trend of following black men and arresting them for fabricated reasons... as Tye laid on the ground compliant, yet scared, his 90-year-old grandmother came out to deescalate this high-stress situation by praying for her grandson and officers. That didn’t work. As the officers approached, they ended up assaulting her and knocking a 90-year-old woman to the ground."
Mayor Patrick Payton and City Councilman John Norman both promised that the incident would serve as a learning experience and they would work to have better communication.
"I believe in transparency. Transparency builds trust. We want to put it out there and give people time to digest it and create their questions if they have questions coming into the town hall meetings," Norman said.