Video: Oklahoma Officer Shot Unarmed Black Man "By Mistake"

By R. Siva Kumar - 14 Apr '15 09:39AM

An unarmed black man was shot and killed by a reserve police officer in Tulsa, Oklahoma, according to rt. The officer, 73-year-old Bob Bates, admitted that he used a gun instead of a taser "by mistake" on the black man.

The video was posted by the cops. One 44-year-old suspect Eric Courtney Harris was shown escaping a police car. Bates chased and caught him, pushed him down on the ground, and then shot him.

"I shot him. I'm sorry," Bates' can be heard saying.

"He shot me!" Harris shouted several times, and then moaned: "Oh my God, I'm losing my breath."

One of the officers swore: "F**k your breath!"

However, though he got medical help in hospital, Harris died when he reached hospital.

Second-degree manslaughter charges were filed against reserve deputy Robert Charles "Bob" Bates, 73, according to usatoday.

District Attorney Stephen Kunzweiler's office in Tulsa said: "Mr. Bates is charged with Second-Degree Manslaughter involving culpable negligence. Oklahoma law defines culpable negligence as 'the omission to do something which a reasonably careful person would do, or the lack of the usual ordinary care and caution in the performance of an act usually and ordinarily exercised by a person under similar circumstances and conditions."

Reserve officer Bates has so far not commented on the situation. He said: "It was me. My attorney has advised me not to comment. As much as I would like to, I can't," he told the local media outlet Tulsa World.

According to the police report, Eric Courtney Harris was a "convicted felon", and was being detained after he was caught selling weapons to an "undercover officer". In a decade, Harris had six criminal felony cases and a Misdemeanor-1 case filed against him. Hence, he made "threatening phone calls, escaped a penal institution in 1990, and carried out an armed robbery," said the report.

He was also marked out by the police for suspected crystal meth distribution.

Although the shooting had taken place in the city, the police department will not enquire into it if the Sheriff's Office did not direct them, Tulsa Police Department homicide Sergeant Dave Walker said Friday.

"And they have not asked us to," Walker said, Tulsa World reported.

Harris's death follows another dashcam footage that showed the deadly shooting of a mentally ill man in Florida, as well as the killing of Walter Scott, who tried to escape a traffic stop. Last year, the death of the unarmed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, was followed by massive protests.