Body camera footage shows hours-long standoff in 4th Fort Worth police shooting

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Fort Worth police released body camera footage Thursday that showed an officer shooting and killing an armed man after multiple chases and a four-hour standoff, in what is now the fourth Fort Worth police shooting of 2025.

Officers first stopped 35-year-old Nicholas Sides in Lake Worth last week for a traffic violation, Lake Worth Police Chief J.T. Manoushagian said during a news conference Thursday.

Police at the scene called for backup because Sides was acting suspiciously during the stop, Manoushagian said.

“His behavior was different than that of an ordinary driver,” Manoushagian said. “Something about how he acted or how he was communicating with her caused [the officer] to believe that there was some kind of criminal activity afoot.”

Sides can be seen driving off in his vehicle when police said backup officers arrived at the scene.
 
The first chase began and ended when Sides crashed into a backyard with his vehicle near Sansom Park. Sides was seen firing multiple shots at officers as they exited their cars. 
 
Officers in the video can be heard trying to de-escalate the situation and giving Sides repeated commands to comply before he got back into his vehicle with a gun pointed to his head and drove away.
 
A second chase began and ended at a residence in the 1700 block of Skyline Drive in Fort Worth, where Sides ran inside.

Manoushagian said they discovered there was a hostage inside -- later identified as Sides’ mother -- which led to officers calling Fort Worth SWAT and Fort Worth police crisis intervention to the scene while officers from Lake Worth and Fort Worth set a perimeter around the house. Sides’ mother was later evacuated from the area.

In a 911 call recording released Thursday, a man identified as Sides can be heard telling dispatch he was in a standoff with police and asking about his mother’s whereabouts.

“SWAT team is going to come in the house and kill me,” he can be heard saying on the call.

Police say they attempted to de-escalate the situation for several hours, with Sides setting off fireworks inside and outside the home at one point. About four hours later, Sides is seen exiting the residence with a gun to his head.

Fort Worth SWAT struck him with rubber bullets to try and disarm him. Sides returned fire, letting off four shots before a member of the SWAT team shot Sides once in the torso. 

He was taken to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

There have been four police shootings in January alone -- a number Fort Worth Police Chief Neil Noakes said is “extremely concerning” compared to four police shootings in all of 2024.

“We’ve done a lot to train people to be prepared to respond to incidents like this,” Noakes said, “but we've failed to prepare them for the aftermath, for dealing with what happens in the days, weeks, months and years after.”

Court records show Sides had a criminal record, including a conviction in 2016 on an aggravated assault charge and was serving a 10-year probation sentence.

No officers or other civilians were injured.