Newly released video shows Buffalo Grove police fatally shooting man after he fires two guns
Buffalo Grove officials on Wednesday released video of the fatal Dec. 2 police shooting of an armed man, as well as a recording of the 911 call that led to the confrontation.
The video, taken by a camera in a police squad car, shows Brian Christopher Howard, 25, firing two handguns into the air while walking toward police officers, who repeatedly tell him to stop and drop the weapons. Howard is then shot to death by one of the officers. Another officer also shot at Howard but didn't hit him.
The video goes on to show officers performing CPR on Howard while he's on the ground. Paramedics eventually arrived, but Howard was pronounced dead on the scene.
Buffalo Grove officials released the video after showing it first to Howard's family. His mother, Kristine Howard, expressed disappointment with how police and the emergency dispatcher responded to her son that night.
"The 911 call - that was the part I think as the family was hardest to hear, because he said he had no intention of hurting anyone," she said. "He said he loved the police and he would never hurt the police and it was his time to go, and he was definitely talking like he was suicidal. When police got there, it took less than a minute to shoot my son, even though he said he wasn't going to hurt anyone."
Buffalo Grove police said they would make no further comment on the shooting until the completion of an ongoing investigation by the Lake County Major Crime Task Force.
The video indicated Brian Howard made the 911 call that led to the deadly confrontation near Radcliffe Road and Boxwood Lane at about 12:30 a.m. Dec. 2. Although he initially talked about "a dude" in the area with two guns, he later admitted to the dispatcher that he was talking about himself, the recording indicates.
Howard, who was living with family in Buffalo Grove, repeatedly requests that police respond and use "lethal" force. The dispatcher repeatedly asks Howard to drop his weapons, but he refuses.
Kristine Howard likened her son's situation to someone standing on top of a building and threatening to jump.
"If he were standing on the edge of the building, they would have tried to talk to him differently as well, and that's what they needed to do," she said. "Rolling up and just starting to shoot at him is seriously like pushing him off the building."
When finished, the task force will turn over its report to the Cook County state's attorney's office.