Bodycam video showing deadly Cobb County police shooting released by family attorneys

Attorneys for the family of a metro Atlanta driver who was shot and killed by a Cobb County police officer in 2021 released footage from the officer’s body camera Wednesday showing the deadly shooting.

The video begins with the officer pointing his gun at the driver – later identified by authorities as Devonte Dawayne Brown, 28, of Austell – who is concealed by deployed airbags.

Brown’s car appears boxed in by police vehicles. The officer repeatedly orders Brown to put his hands up, shouting a few times, “Get your f---ing hands up!”

The video shows the car backing away from a police vehicle it apparently drove into moments before, then driving forward and hitting the police vehicle, backing up, then driving into the police car again.

The video then shows the officer firing around a dozen shots at Brown. The vehicle stops moving. The officer calls for paramedics and says the “suspect is down” with “multiple gunshot wounds.”

The officer says he thinks the fire department will have to extricate the driver.

According to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the agency’s preliminary investigation of the shooting found that around 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 18, 2021, a Cobb County officer saw a “vehicle being driven recklessly” in the area of South Loop and Powder Springs Road in Marietta.

The officer tried to pull over the vehicle, driven by Brown, who initially pulled over “but then refused to comply and sped away,” according to the GBI.

Multiple Cobb County police officers and Cobb County Sheriff’s Office deputies tried to stop Brown, and at one point, officers tried to box in his car, the GBI said.

Brown tried to get away “and hit multiple police vehicles,” and one officer had non-life-threatening injuries “after he was struck by Brown’s vehicle,” according to the GBI.

“As police officers were trying to take Brown into custody, a Cobb County Police Department officer fired his gun, striking Brown,” who was then taken to the hospital, where he died, the GBI said.

The agency said a handgun was found in Brown’s car.

Harry Daniels, a civil rights attorney representing Brown’s family, claimed in a news release Wednesday that Brown “wasn’t a threat to anyone” and the bodycam video “makes it clear that he was trapped like a rat” and was gunned down “like vermin.”

Daniels claimed the officer “can be heard on the video admitting after the shooting that Brown was trapped inside the car when he requested Fire and Rescue to extricate his body from the vehicle.”