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Dashcam footage shows fatal shooting of Ashtian Barnes

HOUSTON – The dash camera video starts as Precinct 5 Deputy Constable R. Felix pulls over the car being driven by Ashtian Barnes on the Beltway at Bellaire.

April 28 was the date.

Next up: protocol.

Felix can be heard asking for a driver's license.

"I saw a black man comply and then I saw an officer be overzealous," Ashton Woods of Houston's Black Lives Matter chapter said after watching the video.

Barnes' family has said he was driving a rental car.

Any toll road violation wouldn't have been his, they argue.

The video, as Tommy Barnes put it, shows the point of protest which, for Barnes, is personal.

"The video shows it," Barnes said. "My son had no intentions on dying that day. He killed my son. He murdered my son."

His son Ashtian Barnes is dead. No one disputes that.

It's how he died, and what his father said the video of his son's death shows, that's upsetting to him and protesters, too.

Woods also questions the part of the traffic stop where Felix is seen partially in Barnes' vehicle.

Precinct 5 has said that Barnes wouldn't comply with Felix's commands and took off with Felix already partially inside the vehicle in an attempt to stop him from reaching around the vehicle.

Officials said Barnes was shot after he took off.

Woods says the video tells a different story.

"Ashtian got shot before the vehicle took off. The first shot killed ... the first strike killed him," Woods said.

In a statement, Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson reached out to Barnes' family, saying in part:

"I know they are disappointed, but the grand jury's decision means they found that there was no probable cause to believe a murder or other assaultive offense was committed. It does not constitute an endorsement of the officer's actions."

Wednesday, a Grand Jury decided not to indict Felix.

"If you really look at the video closely and pay attention, he murdered my son. The car didn't move until he murdered my son," Barnes said. "How would you feel if it was your son? It's like cutting open a wound that wasn't healed."


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