Montgomery County police on Tuesday released nearly 30 minutes of video from body cameras that were recording the night officers fatally shot a man in a McDonald’s drive-through.
The footage, from multiple cameras, shows police negotiating with 21-year-old Ryan LeRoux, commanding him to get out of the car and reporting that they saw a gun on the front passenger seat.
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“He’s up! He’s up!” officers are heard on video shouting as LeRoux is seen sitting up in the driver’s seat after a period of negotiation with police.
Seconds later, officers can be heard shouting about a gun and then firing at the parked white Honda CR-V.
It’s not clear from the footage whether a gun is in LeRoux’s hand when officers shoot at him, but in the video, one of the officers who approached the car after the shooting is heard saying, “Gun is on his lap.”
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Montgomery County Police Chief Marcus Jones narrated through portions of the video from the July 16 shooting at a news conference. Jones said a crisis negotiator was on the way and generally would have taken “about 10 minutes” to get to the scene when the shooting occurred and a gun was later removed from LeRoux’s lap.
“You are watching this from the perspective of the officers’ body-worn cameras,” Jones said. “Their cameras do not replace the human eye and what the officer saw that evening.”
Jones did not make specific statements about whether he thought the officers’ actions were justified.
The Howard County state’s attorney’s office is reviewing the shooting as part of a standing agreement between the counties to review each other’s police shootings. Yolanda Vazquez, a spokeswoman for the Howard County state’s attorney’s office, said the office does not comment on pending investigations.
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LeRoux’s mother, Rhonda LeRoux, said at a gathering in honor of her son Tuesday that the police handling of the situation was “just unacceptable.” She asked why a crisis response unit “with a trained mental health specialist” wasn’t on the scene during the 30 minutes that police communicated with her son.
“Ryan was sitting in his car for over an hour,” Rhonda LeRoux said during the gathering, held hours after police released the video footage Tuesday. “Clearly, the Montgomery County police failed to de-escalate the situation.”
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The footage of the negotiation period and shooting released Tuesday is compiled from several officers’ body cameras and an audio call from a crisis negotiator. The videos released are not in chronological order and are in segments of actions taken by each officer, Jones said. Another video seen in the footage is from a camera that was placed by police in the McDonald’s drive-through window.
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Jones said that upon completion of the investigation, all videos “will be available for release.”
The footage begins with officers responding to a trespassing call at the McDonald’s on Flower Hill Way for a person ordering food, refusing to pay and remaining parked in the drive-through, police said.
The first officer on the scene notes in the video that LeRoux is “sitting in the car, gun is on the passenger seat,” and that LeRoux is unresponsive to his commands to unlock the door.
After several requests that LeRoux put his hands up and exit his vehicle, the officer asks over his radio for a phone call to be made to the McDonald’s telling employees to leave the drive-through window.
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“I don’t want them in our line of sight,” an officer is heard saying.
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More officers arrive, surrounding the drive-through, and stop sticks are placed in front of LeRoux’s car, according to the video and Jones’s narration.
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During his narration of the footage, Jones said officers are shown trying to “bring this to a peaceful conclusion.”
An employee with the Montgomery County Emergency Communications Center is able to make phone contact with LeRoux inside his vehicle and asks him if he can “show the officers your hands.” LeRoux responds, “My hands are already up.”
The communicator, who is speaking to the dispatcher and LeRoux, tells LeRoux that “we’re trying to help you” and that officers want to see his hands outside the window. LeRoux repeats that his hands are up, and after being asked by someone on the phone, says that “they’re out the window.”
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“Officers did not see that,” Jones said.
After the shooting, officers “provided immediate first aid” to LeRoux, a statement in the video read. LeRoux was taken to a hospital and died of his injuries, the statement read.
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After police released the body-camera video on Tuesday, community members and LeRoux family members gathered at Johnson Park in the neighborhood of the shooting. They held signs reading “Rest in Peace, Ryan LeRoux” with a picture of LeRoux in an athletic uniform next to a stop sign bearing the words “Stop Police Violence.”
Carlean Ponder, who is with the Silver Spring Justice Coalition, which organized the event, said the Montgomery County Police Department needs to work on its de-escalation standards and tactics. It was “clear that Ryan was a young man in distress” in the released footage from police, she said.
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“The Silver Spring Justice Coalition is asking Chief Jones to tell us clearly, what is the de-escalation plan for police officers in situations where people are clearly in mental distress?” Ponder said. “What is 30 minutes? Is that enough to brag about and say we engaged in de-escalation?”
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Ponder said the coalition is asking for “full transparency” from the department and its leadership and wants the release of all body-camera footage from the full duration of the encounter.
Reading her written statement on behalf of the family, Rhonda LeRoux said had no doubt that Ryan had been “suffering from depression.”
She said he had gone through several recent hardships, including the loss of his job, “a broken relationship with his long-term girlfriend” and the loss of his grandmother, to whom he had been “very close.” She added that he “wanted to be independent” and was living in his car.
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“He felt he needed to purchase a handgun for his own protection,” Rhonda LeRoux said.
She said she will miss her son’s coming over to visit and the hugs he would give her before leaving.
As she began to walk away from the lectern, standing in the center of the crowd, she looked up to the sky and said, “I love you, son. Mom and Dad love you. We’re gonna deeply miss you.”
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