A Shreveport police officer who shot and killed an unarmed Black man as he fled his home earlier this month was arrested on Thursday morning, according to Louisiana State Police.
The cop, Alexander Tyler, has been charged with negligent homicide nearly two weeks after Alonzo Bagley, 43, died at his apartment complex on Feb. 3 following a call to police by his wife.
“Detectives with the Louisiana State Police Bureau of Investigations have reviewed body worn camera footage and other relevant evidence,” state police said in their announcement Thursday afternoon. “Based on their findings and in coordination with the Caddo Parish District Attorney’s Office, Troopers arrested Shreveport Police Officer Alexander Tyler this morning.”
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Along with announcing the arrest, police also released some bodycam footage and a recording of the 911 call placed the evening Bagley was killed.
Bagley’s family said the footage proved he should not have lost his life that day.
“Alonzo was just so, so scared,” the family’s attorney, Ron Haley, said in a statement. “Everyone at the scene, including the perpetrator Alexander Tyler, knew Mr. Bagley should not have been shot that night. He wasn’t a threat. He deserved to live.”
According to the arrest warrant, police were called to Bagley’s home by his wife, who said he was drunk and threatening her and her daughters. After cops arrived, Bagley went into his bedroom, attempted to “grab something off a nightstand,” and then fled the apartment by jumping over the balcony handrail, police said. As Bagley ran through the apartment complex, Tyler shot him in the chest in an entryway.
“Oh, Lord. Oh, God. You shot me,” Bagley, who had his empty hands in the air, told the officer, according to the filing. Tyler and another officer called to the scene attempted to administer aid, but he was later pronounced dead.
According to the affidavit, Tyler, 23, told police that Bagley had approached him and that he “could not see his hands.” But the warrant states that “there were no known reports made to the responding officers that [Bagley] was in possession of a dangerous weapon…[and] no articulable facts were provided… that would justify the need for deadly force.”
In one of the bodycam videos released, two officers can be seen knocking on the door of Bagley’s apartment. He answers with a liquor bottle in hand and declines to step outside, then claims he needs to put his dog away and walks back into the apartment.
Officers follow him into a back bedroom and see Bagley jumping over the balcony outside the room. The officer wearing the body camera leaves the apartment to follow Bagley as he runs through the apartment complex. At one point, a loud gunshot rings out and Bagley can be seen collapsing against the side of a building. Another officer, who is already outside, then walks with a gun toward Bagley.
A second video shows Tyler chasing Bagley with his gun in his hand, before he cuts around a corner of a building and shoots.
“No, no, no, man! C’mon, dude!” Tyler anxiously pants, seemingly surprised at the severity of Bagley’s injuries.
At a press conference with Bagley’s family on Thursday afternoon, Haley said, “Flight is not a death sentence. Flight does not mean shoot to kill. Flight does not mean judge, jury and executioner. And that's what happened here.”
He questioned overall policing in the country, claiming no amount of training can remove cops’ bias towards Black and brown men. He slammed Shreveport police and accused Tyler of having previous disciplinary issues. Alternatively, he commended Louisiana State Police for taking swift action.
Bagley’s brother, Xavier Sudds, said he didn’t understand why Tyler immediately pulled his gun out.
“As a police officer, you have a calling to protect and serve,” he said. “I don’t feel like Shreveport police protected or served Alonzo Bagley, my brother, a son, a husband. They failed miserably.”
Bagley’s family criticized the local city government, claiming the mayor hadn’t provided any comfort in the nearly two weeks since Bagley’s death. Some also felt Tyler wasn’t properly charged.
“It honestly got me seeing him take his last breath. It really broke my heart; my heart’s still broken,” Sudds said. “I’m gonna keep saying that this is painful. I'm hurting. My family is hurting. We’re hurting as a people, and a call to justice is what is needed.”
In an interview with local news outlet KSLA following the presser, Tyler’s attorney, Dhu Thompson, said no officer ever wants to be in a situation like his client.
“All good officers don’t go out on the street, you know, wanting to shoot somebody in this situation,” he said. “He was put in an unfortunate situation. He’s not cavalier about this. He’s just as shook about this incident as any other reasonable officer would be.”
Gregory O’Neal, a childhood friend of Bagley’s, told The Daily Beast on Thursday that he’s still struggling to process what happened after viewing the “devastating” bodycam footage.
O’Neal and Bagley met as kids, and their friendship continued into their adulthood. They shared the same birthday, had mutual friends, and grew up in the same neighborhood, where O’Neal eventually became president of the residential association, he said.
“Being involved in a neighborhood and just seeing what’s going on in the community and then seeing things that are going on in the world, it’s definitely devastating when a person you grew up with ends up in a situation like this,” O’Neil explained.
According to CNN, Bagley sued Shreveport police officers, accusing them of assaulting him during a 2018 arrest. It’s unclear how that lawsuit was resolved.
O’Neal speculated that Bagley may have run away from the officers because of his previous encounter with police.
“I think the officer responded out of—I’m not gonna say fear, but he had different options he could’ve chose[n],” O’Neal told The Daily Beast. “Just firing a shot, there are a lot of other opportunities that he could have taken at that point.”
