On the afternoon of January 8, the East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office and the Baton Rouge Police Department approached the Willis family apartment with a warrant for their son Keaughn. He was not home at the time, and his brother, 25-year-old Baton Rouge resident Deaughn Willis, opened the door instead. Shortly after, an officer shot and killed him. 

In the weeks that followed, the family inside the apartment and the officers involved gave contradicting accounts of what happened.

The officers initially reported that they announced themselves as the police when they arrived at the apartment. They claimed that Deaughn brandished a gun at them and said that their deputy justifiably opened fire in response. 

The family inside of the home, including Deaughn’s mother Trinelle Willis, recounts the afternoon quite differently.

“I woke up and I heard these aggressive knocks at the door,” Trinelle said in an interview with The Reveille. “We kept asking, ‘Who is it?’ but no one said, ‘We are the sheriff’s department.’ We thought it was an intruder.”

Trinelle said that the police officers’ claims that Deaughn was brandishing a weapon when he opened the door are false. 

“All I saw my son do was peep out the door,” Trinelle said. “He never brandished anything. That’s when the gunshots were fired.”

Immediately after the shooting, Trinelle said she called 9-1-1. The recording of the call has not been released to the public.

“When I was told by 9-1-1 for my family to step out with our hands up, I was so confused like, what was going on?” Trinelle said. “I kept calling for them to help him, but I never saw EMS. I never saw anybody come to try to rescue or see what was going on with him. He was bleeding out, but he was still breathing.”

Since the incident, a video has been released from a neighbor’s doorbell camera that shows the police knocking on the door and firing. It also shows the officers seeming to crack a joke, as one deputy says, “They know it’s the f—ing police now.” 

The angle of the camera did not show Deaughn.

Another brief video clip, one leaked from an officer’s body camera on the scene, also fails to provide a view of Deaughn when he opened the door.

The EBR Sheriff’s Office deputies were not wearing body cameras, but the city police on the scene were. Despite the demands of both the Willis family and the public, the rest of the bodycam footage from BRPD has not been released. 

Trinelle Willis has since traveled to LSU’s campus, rallying support for her son and demanding that BRPD release all bodycam footage from the scene to the public. A large group of students and Baton Rouge residents joined her for a candlelight vigil in honor of her son on Sunday, March 15.

Amid all of these conflicting reports and blurry videos, the behavior of the police and sheriff’s office is puzzling.

BRPD has already seen several officers under investigation for police brutality and other charges in recent years, including the killing of Alton Sterling in 2016. 

Even if the department was not entrenched in a history of violence, this case raises many questions on its own.

Why would officers claim to have announced themselves after making a joke about their failure to do so? Why would they refuse to give Deaughn medical attention, as he bleeds out on the floor, and instead choose to handcuff the family and lock them into a police car? Even if they were averse to caring for Deaughn themselves, couldn’t they have allowed his own mother to attend to her son instead of cuffing her while he lay dying?

More pointedly, why would they ignore public backlash and refuse to release all of the videos from the incident? If the officers’ lives were really in danger and the use of force was justifiable, then they have the footage to exonerate them at the tip of their fingers. Instead, this police department with a history of brutality expects a skeptical city to trust them at its word.

Releasing all the bodycam footage and the 9-1-1 call is a simple step toward transparency and accountability. If BRPD truly has nothing to hide, then it should be open with what it has and assuage our community of any doubts.

Noah McKinney is an English and history junior from Houston, TX.