Body-cam footage released Wednesday shows an Ohio sheriff’s deputy shooting a news photographer whose camera he mistook for a gun.
“Andy, I’m sorry, brother,” Clark County sheriff’s deputy Jake Shaw can be heard saying. “Listen, dude, you pulled that out like a gun out of the back of the Jeep.”
Andy Grimm was on his way Monday night to photograph a lightning storm in New Carlisle when he saw a traffic stop and decided to take a picture. Shaw was sitting in his cruiser waiting for information on a vehicle he pulled over when he opened his door and fired two shots, according to footage taken from Shaw’s body camera.
One bullet struck Grimm in the chest, and he said another may have hit his shoulder.
Shaw soon realized he had made a mistake and shot someone he knew. After apologizing, he can be heard saying, “I thought it was a freaking gun, Andy.”
Grimm is heard in the video trying to explain that he waved at Shaw and flashed his car lights. However, he also takes responsibility, saying “it’s my fault.”
As Shaw calls in over the radio that he fired two shots, Grimm can be heard saying: “Thank God you missed one.”
Deputy Shaw is heard crying and praying that Grimm will be all right.
Grimm is out of the hospital and recovering. His father said Wednesday his son slept well overnight but is very sore.
The wounded Grimm told the Daily News in an interview early Tuesday that “now that I’m OK, I’m not so much mad, but when I was on the ground and in the back of the ambulance, I was kind of angry at him.”
Shaw, 25, joined the department in 2012 and became a full-time deputy in 2015. He has average or above average performance comments in his personnel file, but was reprimanded last year for failing to electronically record his hourly checks on inmates.
He’s on administrative leave following the shooting, which is under investigation by the state Bureau of Criminal Investigation.
Source: http://www.nydailynews.com