East Lansing Police Release Video of Fatal Shooting of Isaiah Kirby
Content Warning: This story contains extremely graphic video footage.
The East Lansing Police Department released video of the fatal police shooting of Isaiah Kirby, a 21-year-old Black man, that took place on April 15.
A narrated timeline of events edited together by the police department includes audio of three 911 calls. Callers reported that a man near the Lake Lansing Road and Abbot Road intersection had stabbed someone in a Biggby parking lot.
Body camera video shows police stopping their cars in the direction Kirby is running. Kirby is running along the bike lane and police cars are stopped in the road. Officers yell at Kirby to get on the ground and he continues to run. He is approaching officers near the first police car when several shots are fired.
Kirby falls to the ground and is screaming as officers continue to yell at him to put his knife down. On his knees, Kirby appears to hold the knife near his own throat when three more shots are fired. Kirby then begins to crawl when six more shots are fired. The three waves of shots came within about 20 seconds of officers stopping their cars, with initial shots coming about five seconds after police stopped their cars.
Officers continue to yell at Kirby to put the knife down as he lies on the side of the road, only moving slightly. The narrated footage shows footage of police using a shield to remove the knife.
The footage also shows officers rendering aid to Kirby and Douglas Mielock, the 63-year-old stabbing victim. Mielock’s face and body are covered in blood. In a press release ELPD said it does not have video of the stabbing, but the department did include a video from a bystander who filmed the aftermath.
In its press release, ELPD said Michigan State Police is continuing to investigate the police officers involved in the shooting.
ELPD named four officers involved in the shooting and the number of years they have worked in the department in its release: Beck Martin, three years; Brennan Surman, two years; Benjamin Saylor, one year; and Zane Johnson Chasteen; three months.
The ELPD press release said the department has no further comment besides the information provided.
Surveillance video, witness account explain events preceding shooting.
Police were initially dispatched to the area in response to a theft at Marco’s Pizza restaurant, which is across the street from the lot Mielock was stabbed. Video the Marco’s staff allowed East Lansing Info to use and an account from the employee who interacted with Kirby help explain what happened before the shooting.
Surveillance video from the business shows Kirby entering the restaurant. Marco’s employee Ian Sargeant told ELi on Wednesday evening that Kirby drove to the business and then posed as a delivery driver. Sargeant said Kirby was asked by an employee who he was picking up for, but then walked over to the delivery pick up area, opened a pizza box and began eating.
The footage shows Kirby was told to leave the business and did briefly, returning about 30 seconds later. He took a few steps into the business and then exited again.
Less than two minutes later, video shows Kirby again entering the restaurant. Sargeant walks to block access to the area behind the counter, telling him to leave the business. Kirby walks until he is chest to chest with Sargeant, and then leaves after other Marco’s employees gather behind Sargeant.
“He came up, he was like ‘What are you going to do to make me [leave]?’” Sargeant told ELi. “The only thing I’m going to do is call the cops and tell you to get out.”
At this point, Sargeant called the police, telling ELi he did not see a knife, but was worried Kirby would become violent.
While on the phone with a 911 dispatcher, Sargeant said he saw Kirby engaged in a physical altercation with another man in the lot across the street, but did not know a stabbing occurred until later.
“It looked like, to me, like he’s hitting somebody,” he said. “I’m telling the dispatcher … ‘This has gone from an assault to an assault and battery now. Please send someone here quickly and help this person.’”
At Tuesday’s City Council meeting, Shelley Davis Boyd, who said she shares children with Mielock, said he was leaving a barber shop and entering his car when he was attacked from behind by someone he did not know.
Davis Boyd said Mielock had been speaking with his son over the phone at the time, who was left not knowing what happened until a stranger picked up Mielock’s phone and told him his father had been stabbed.
Mielock sustained at least 12 stab wounds and “numerous” defensive blunt force injuries, Davis Boyd said.
Davis Boyd said she and her daughter drove to the scene, only to learn Mielock was already being taken to the hospital.
“While our son was driving back to East Lansing, our 18-year-old daughter was suddenly being forced to make medical decisions for her father as doctors prepared lifesaving measures because of the severity of his injuries,” Davis Boyd said at Tuesday’s meeting.
Davis Boyd said Mielock spent several days in an Intensive Care Unit before he was released and the incident has left the family traumatized.
Kirby family’s attorney, East Lansing Independent Police Oversight Commission vice chair each say police shooting was not justified.
After the release of the footage, Teresa A. Caine Bingman, the attorney for the Kirby family, put out a statement saying the lethal use of force was not justified.
“After reviewing multiple complete, unedited body camera footage, dash camera footage, and eyewitness videos, it is clear that Isaiah Kirby was met with an immediate and overwhelming use of deadly force,” Bingman’s statement says. “Within moments of arriving on the scene, East Lansing police officers did not use non lethal options and immediately fired more than 20 rounds.”
East Lansing Independent Police Oversight Commission Vice Chair Kath Edsall said there were other options available to officers besides lethal force, like firing non-lethal rounds from their cars. But she is most concerned about the second two waves of shots that came while Kirby was on the ground.
“Isaiah was on the ground holding a knife to his own neck and they shot him in the back,” Edsall said. “They executed him.”
After the shooting, Edsall said that the police department’s efforts to render aid were unacceptable.
“I saw no one check for a pulse, I saw no one check for respiration,” she said. “They didn’t roll him over onto his back in order to administer CPR, they put band-aids on his back.”
Edsall said she believes Police Chief Jennifer Brown needs to be fired immediately, a stance both the city’s Police Oversight Commission and Human Rights Commission took late last year, and that City Manager Robert Belleman needs to go as well.
She continued to say the city withholding the footage for 30 days and changing the rules to public comment at City Council meetings show city officials are trying to control the narrative.
Edsall said Kirby could have been experiencing a mental health crisis but even if he wasn’t, he should have been allowed to live and go through the legal process.
“He’s on the ground, he clearly can’t use his legs, he lifts his body up and they shoot him again and they shoot him again,” Edsall said. “There’s no reason to use lethal force at that point in time.
“I don’t care what the MSP (Michigan State Police) [investigation] comes back [with] because they’re also cops, they’re going to defend it,” she continued. “It’s not what we, in East Lansing, should be doing. We should be better than that, and we’re not.”