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A recently released video which shows the fatal shooting of 26-year-old Cameron Massey at the hands of Alabama police officers has reignited interest in the case. The incident, which took place in October 2013, has become a crusade of the slain man’s family and their attorney says the footage strikes down claims that Massey was an aggressor in the matter.

From BuzzFeed News:

BuzzFeed News has obtained video footage of two police officers in Alabama fatally shooting an unarmed black man, 26-year-old Cameron Massey, in the passenger’s seat of a car in October 2013. An attorney for the slain man’s family says the footage refutes the officers’ claims that they were facing imminent danger when they opened fire.

The video, which has not been previously released publicly, contains five minutes of footage from the body camera of one of the officers involved in the shooting, Eufaula Police Chief Ralph Conner. Massey died after being shot five times.

“Officers cannot just shoot people based on absolutely irrational perspectives about a scenario,” Mario Williams, the lawyer for the Massey family, told BuzzFeed News. “This was an absolutely unreasonable shooting.”

Massey’s family filed a civil suit against the officers and the department in July 2015. The suit is ongoing. Both officers claim that they fired because they feared Massey was going to injure one of the officers.

Officer John Phillips told investigators that he stopped the car, a black Infinity with a Georgia Disabled Veterans tag, because a confidential informant had told him that a vehicle fitting that description was carrying a load of marijuana through town. Phillips said that he pulled the car over after it made an improper lane change. Later, officers found seven pounds of marijuana in the trunk.

Chief Conner fired the first shot and wrote in a police report that he did so after seeing the vehicle drag Officer Phillips, this after he allegedly tried to grab Massey through the driver’s window. Phillips fired four times and said shot his service weapon because he wasn’t aware of who fired the initial shot and was scared for his life.

A grand jury failed to indict Conner and Phillips, but that has not deterred Massey’s family from attempting to seek justice.

According to BuzzFeed’s report, Conner shot an unarmed Black man over 30 years ago.

SOURCE: BuzzFeed News | VIDEO CREDIT: BuzzFeed News

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