No charges were filed Wednesday after the body camera footage of the officer-involved shooting at Austin-East High School in Knoxville, Tennessee, was released.
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The prosecutor said the fatal police shooting of the Knoxville high school student was justified, according to reporter Paul Miles.
Pressure mounted on authorities to publicly release police body camera video of a shooting at a school in the Tennessee city of Knoxville that left a student dead and an officer wounded.
Knoxville Mayor Indya Kincannon on Monday repeated her call from last week for the local district attorney to authorize the release of video footage of the April 12 shooting at Austin-East Magnet High School in the East Tennessee city.
The mayor said the video was essential to restoring trust in police. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation initially said the student fired at police before he was killed, then later said the bullet that wounded an officer did not come from the student’s gun.
Activists also pushed for release of the video, along with three of the four officers involved in the shooting. At least three other students of the school have died in off-campus shootings this year.
The TBI said it will provide a report to the district attorney when its investigation is complete, and the district attorney will decide whether to pursue charges against any officers. The investigation includes review of police body camera footage and school surveillance video. TBI investigations of shootings involving police typically take months.
In a news conference hours after the shooting, TBI Director David Rausch said the student, since identified as 17-year-old Anthony J. Thompson Jr., was killed in a confrontation with police inside a bathroom. Rausch said at the time that Thompson fired shots as officers entered the bathroom, striking an officer.
Two days later, the TBI changed its statement, saying the student’s gun was fired during a struggle with school resource officer Adam Willson, who was wounded. The TBI’s second statement said the officer was not shot with Thompson’s gun.
The TBI has declined to say if the shot that struck Willson came from an officer’s gun and has provided no further explanation. Willson is recovering from surgery.
Police fatally shot Thompson, who is Black. Willson and another one of the officers involved in the shooting are white, and two are Black. All four were placed on temporary leave.
The TBI’s reversal has led some to question the state police agency’s version of events and press for immediate release of the video.
Kincannon said at a news conference Monday the timely release of the video is necessary to bolster trust between police and the community.
“Accountability is essential to trust,” said Kincannon, who noted that police body cameras were fully deployed within the Knoxville Police Department just weeks ago.
“We pursued these cameras as another tool to build public trust and to be transparent with the community,” Kincannon said. “Transparency also means timely. Not six or 18 months later, but as soon after an incident as possible. Every day the video is not released perpetuates rumors and misinformation.”
Earlier Monday, a Tennessee woman said she called police about a physical fight involving her daughter and the girl’s boyfriend before he was fatally shot by officers in a high school bathroom.
Regina Perkins said she called police last Monday on Thompson, the Knoxville News Sentinel reported.
Police said Thompson had a gun inside Austin-East Magnet High School in east Knoxville later Monday and was shot to death in a confrontation with officers in a bathroom.
Perkins said Thompson and her daughter, a junior, had dated for nine months. The girl called Perkins from an assistant principal’s office earlier Monday, saying she was upset and wanted to leave school early. Perkins said she allowed her to sign out and go home, where the girl indicated she and Thompson got into a scuffle during an argument.
Perkins said she tried without success to reach Thompson’s mother before calling police. An officer came to her home to take a statement. Perkins said she also exchanged text messages with Thompson, telling him that an officer would come to the school.
“I am so sorry, and I never meant for anything to happen to him. We are mourning, my daughter is grieving the loss of her first love, and we also want answers and justice in this case."
“Anthony was aware that I had called the police and made a report,” Perkins said.
Not long after that, Perkins said she saw a helicopter above the school and learned that the school was on lockdown. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said police responded to a report of a possible gunman about 15 minutes before the school’s 3:30 p.m. dismissal.
Perkins said she now wishes she had never called police.
“I am so sorry, and I never meant for anything to happen to him,” Perkins said. “We are mourning, my daughter is grieving the loss of her first love, and we also want answers and justice in this case.”
During the shooting, a school resource officer was wounded by a gunshot, which the TBI said did not come from the student’s gun, raising the possibility that the officer could have been hit by police gunfire. Willson, the resource officer who was shot in the leg and is recovering after surgery, was released from the hospital Friday.
A local prosecutor has denied a request by Knoxville’s mayor to release video footage of the shooting, saying the public will be allowed to see the body camera evidence at some point.
The shooting occurred as the community reels from off-campus gun violence that has left three other Austin-East students dead this year.
It also comes as more classrooms are reopening to students after months of remote learning during the coronavirus pandemic, a period that saw a drop in mass killings in the U.S. The nation has seen a series of mass shootings in recent weeks.
Rich Barak of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution contributed to this report.
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