A Philadelphia police officer who shot and killed a man last month surrendered to officials on murder charges Friday.
Officer Mark Dial shot Eddie Irizarry Jr. only about five seconds after exiting his police car. Police pulled Irizarry over for driving erratically including making an illegal right turn and going the wrong way down a one way street, Dail’s lawyer alleges. Dial originally claimed Irizarry was outside of the vehicle and lunging at him with a knife, but two days later police admitted to the media that that was not the case. Newly released body cam footage shows Irizarry had no time to respond to officers’ commands, from ABC News:
The district attorney’s office showed footage from the body-worn cameras of Dial and a second officer who was at the scene. Irizarry’s family and their counsel had previously seen the videos and requested that they be played in their entirety, he said.
Krasner warned that the footage “will in some ways be traumatic.”
The footage shows Dial getting out of his cruiser and approaching Irizarry’s car with his gun drawn. “I will f——— shoot you,” he says, before firing into the front driver’s seat where Irizarry was seated. Prior to shots being fired, an officer can be heard yelling at Irizarry to show his hands.
Dial fired six shots “at close range,” Krasner said. The DA was unable to answer how many times Irizarry was struck, pending a final autopsy report.
Dial can also be seen pulling a bloodied Irizarry out of the car and then, with the second officer at the scene, carrying him to their police cruiser. The second officer can be heard radioing that they are “scooping” a man to bring to a hospital.
In the body cam footage you can hear another officer saying “Mark, hold on. Mark, stop.” Dial was suspended for 30 days before the district attorney filed charges of “…voluntary manslaughter, aggravated assault, simple assault, reckless endangerment of another person and official oppression,” according to ABC. Dial’s lawyer told reporters his client is innocent on all charges, and genuinely feared for his life when he killed Irizarry:
“To charge officer Mark Dial with murder is abhorrent,” Brian McMonagle, one of Dial’s attorneys, told reporters following the surrender Friday morning. “The undisputed facts of the case are that an individual made an illegal turn right in front of police officers, took off at a high rate of speed, and then tried to evade officers by going down a one-way street the wrong way, tried to hide from them.”
“And when police officers ordered him to show his hands, he instead produced a weapon and pointed it at an armed police officer,” he continued.
Please note: Making an illegal right turn isn’t a death penalty crime, even in Philadelphia.
Please note, this footage my be disturbing to some viewers: