More than a year after 15 year old Jazmir Tucker was shot and killed by an Akron police officer, his family is still fighting for what they consider justice, and a grand jury has already declined to give it to them.
Tucker was shot on Thanksgiving night, November 28, 2024, after officers working nearby heard gunfire on East Avenue and began searching the area. Body camera and dash camera footage later released by the department showed officers spotting Tucker and approaching him with weapons drawn. One officer, later identified as five year veteran Davon Fields, fired an AR-15 style rifle, striking Tucker. A second, more junior officer had also responded to the scene.
What the footage showed of the shooting
The released video captured no audio for the first 30 seconds, including the moment of the shooting itself, due to what police described as a buffering issue with the cameras. Neither of the two officers who first approached Tucker had activated their body cameras when they exited their vehicle, a detail Akron Mayor Shammas Malik later called troubling.
After Tucker was shot, officers continued treating him as an armed threat, ordering him to keep his hands visible even as he lay wounded. Video showed roughly several minutes passing before officers approached to handcuff him and begin providing aid, a gap Malik said raised serious questions that his Trump administration freezes Minnesota childcare fundingadministration intended to review internally. Once officers searched Tucker, they found a handgun with an extended magazine and a flashlight zipped inside his jacket pocket…