Last month, New Jersey police officers responding to a mental health call told a woman, “We don’t want to hurt you. We want to help you,” before she was shot and killed minutes later.
New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin on Friday released body camera footage from the July 28 officer-involved shooting of Victoria Lee in the chest outside a Fort Lee apartment. Officer Tony Pickens Jr. was one of several Fort Lee Police Department officers who responded to the apartment early that morning after Lee’s brother called 911 to say his sister was having mental health issues. In a subsequent call, he told the 911 operator that his sister was in possession of a “folding” knife.
Video footage from four body cameras shows Lee, 25, walking toward officers and holding a large water jug before she is shot. Officers yell at her to “drop the knife,” though it’s unclear in the video if she has a knife in her hand.
The Attorney General’s Office, which is investigating Lee’s killing, said a knife had been recovered but did not say whether Lee had the knife in his hand during the encounter with police.
Lee’s family called the police response “unnecessarily heavy-handed” and said Lee was only holding a five-gallon container of water when he was shot. Police referred a request for comment to the Attorney General’s office. When an NBC News reporter reached Pickens on Friday, he hung up the phone.
Body camera footage shows officers repeatedly demanding that Lee open the door before the shooting, with Lee telling officers to go home and at one point threatening to stab officers if they broke down the door.
According to body camera footage, Officer Pickens, who was the first to arrive at the apartment door, was first confronted by Lee’s brother, who advised him that Lee was in the bedroom and had a knife. Officer Pickens told the brother that if his sister had a knife, she was going to hurt someone.
Officers pushed open the apartment door to find Lee and his mother holding a barking dog. Lee’s mother repeatedly told the officers, “Don’t come in.” Lee told the officers, “Close our f**king door,” and closed the door. Lee can be seen pointing her finger at Pickens and telling him not to come in before closing the door.
As Pickens was talking to Lee’s brother outside the apartment door, Lee yelled, “Who told you to open my door for a motherfucker like you?” according to the video.
Several more officers then arrived on the scene and told Lee’s brother, who claimed he did not have a key to open the door, that they needed to enter the apartment.
Pickens told Lee through the door that he was going to break it down, to which Lee responded, “Come on, I’m gonna stab you in your goddamn neck.”
She also told the officers, “If you want to shoot me, you can,” to which the officers responded, “I don’t want to shoot you. I want to help you.” Lee then yelled, “Go home, you pig!”
Officers gathered outside the apartment and discussed who would be “lethal” or “less lethal.” Pickens, according to body camera footage, agreed to be “lethal” and then said, “I’m going to break down the door, ma’am.” One of the officers said that normally they would have “barricaded ourselves and waited,” but that someone else was in the apartment and they needed to go in.
As Pickens broke down the door, Pickens yelled, “Open the door,” while other officers yelled, “Drop your weapon,” and “We’re going to break down the door.” When the door opened, Lee and her mother were at the door, and Lee was holding a water pitcher. It is unclear if she was also holding a knife; family members say she dropped the knife.
As Lee approached the officers, Pickens fired one shot, and officers can be heard yelling “drop the knife” on body camera footage.
After Lee was shot, officers dragged her to the front door of the apartment and rescued her.
She was later pronounced dead at hospital.
In addition to the body camera footage, the attorney general’s office also released a 911 call made by Lee’s brother on Friday. The brother had requested an ambulance to take his sister to the hospital. In the second 911 call, the brother asked the dispatcher if he could cancel the call. The dispatcher replied that he couldn’t because it was a mental health call and that officers would arrive shortly. When the dispatcher asked the brother why he wanted to cancel the call, the brother replied that Lee had a folding knife but was not trying to cut anyone.
Prior to the video’s release, Lee’s family had said that Lee was not and had never been violent, even during previous mental health episodes, and that they had called 911 in the past for mental health issues, and that 911 responders always understood Lee’s unstable mental state and worked with the family to “de-escalate the situation and get Victoria to the hospital.”
The family’s lawyer, Henry Suk-jin Cho, declined to comment. He previously told NBC News he planned to view the body camera footage with Lee’s family on Friday morning before it’s released to the public. Lee was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2017 and has battled the disorder through a variety of activities, including work, travel and music, the family said.
After the video was released, Stop AAPI Hate and AAPI New Jersey said in a statement that the police response was “unjustified and unjustified.”
The group said Ms Lee’s family “repeatedly asked police not to enter the apartment, but without sufficient effort to de-escalate or prioritise the use of non-lethal force, officers forced open the door and shot and killed Victoria within seconds”.
