STLPR0%
St. Louis police say teen pointed gun before killing him — their footage shows otherwise 42%
By Rachel Lippmann0%
4/16/2026, 10:00:00 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 15 faulty reasoning types, including Ad Hominem, Appeal to Emotion, and Confirmation Bias, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 18.4% saturation with 197 hits. Analysis detected 930 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,068 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 46.1% and a BS Rank of 42% (9,751 of 16,813 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 58.00% of the article peer group.
In June 2024, a St.
Louis Metropolitan Police Department officer shot and killed 17-year-old Emeshyon Wilkins in the Ville neighborhood.
In a seven-line statement posted on its website, the department said “an armed suspect turned and pointed a gun at officers” during a foot pursuit.
The teenager had been in a stolen SUV that had failed to stop for police.
A wrongful death lawsuit filed by Wilkins’ parents in 2025 told a different story.
Their son, it claimed, was actively running from police and did not have a functioning weapon on him.
Now, body camera footage released by Albert Watkins, the family’s lawyer, appears to back up the claims in the lawsuit.
“This footage, unequivocally and without any ability to discount it due to flaws in audio or otherwise, reflects the murder of Emeshyon Wilkins, a young man who had just turned 17 in 2024,” Watkins said in an interview Wednesday with St.
Louis Public Radio.
The three minutes of footage shows numerous police officers on foot and vehicles pursuing Wilkins as he runs in an alley behind the 4200 block of Maffitt Avenue.
An officer, identified in the lawsuit as Brett Carlson, tells him to “get on the f----ing ground” and twice to “drop the f----ing gun” before firing at least four shots.
At no point does Wilkins appear to turn to face the officers.
It is not clear whether he has anything in his hands.
Later in the video, Carlson can be heard swearing as he moves Wilkins’ lifeless body, telling others, “the gun’s right f----ing here.”
The angle of Carlson’s body makes it hard to see where he is referencing, but there is no firearm visible around Wilkins, and officers do not appear to pick anything up from the ground.
Watkins confirmed that Wilkins had a disassembled handgun in his pocket.
As other officers gather, one can be heard saying, “he’s got a gun underneath him.”
The SLMPD did not respond to an emailed list of questions.
In a statement provided to the St.
Louis Post-Dispatch, a department spokesman acknowledged the initial account provided to the public “was not consistent with the actual events.”
“They’ve acknowledged it was incorrect.
What they haven’t said is that [Wilkins] was unarmed,” Watkins said.
“We all know that law enforcement does not work without integrity.”
The department did not explain when it found out its initial public account was incorrect.
It also did not say whether it had made any attempts to correct that account prior to making its statement to the newspaper.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Rachel Lippmann: Why publicly release this video now?
Albert Watkins: We were retained by Emeshyon’s parents.
They knew something wasn’t right about the story given by police.
They assured me that it just could not have happened that way.
I’m not going to file a lawsuit for no reason.
I want to see the police reports, I want to see the bodycam footage.
So we filed a Freedom of Information Act request.
It was not responded to.
We followed up over and over and over again, and we heard different reasons, different excuses and delays.
Finally, after pursuing independent evaluation of what happened, we filed a lawsuit which, among other things, sought that footage.
Lippmann: How are Emeshyon’s parents feeling now that this video is out there that appears to back up their belief in what happened?
Watkins: I believe that in one certain very small respect, they feel vindicated.
But that is so small and minor compared to the ongoing pain and agony that they feel daily.
Emeshyon’s mother said to me, “You know, I had Emeshyon when I was 17, and he died when he was 17.”
He never had that chance to be a dad.
He never had that chance to grow up to raise a family.
Lippmann: Do you think the officer who fired the shots actually believed Emeshyon had a gun on him?
Watkins: I can’t speak for what he believed.
But I would find it reprehensible to my core if that shot occurred with anything other than a genuine, albeit remarkably displaced belief that there was a gun in [Emeshyon’s] hand.
But what bothers me most about this is the flaws that were involved from the police with respect to this shooting that occurred well before the shooting.
This was a pursuit of a stolen car that was identified as having been stolen days earlier.
That’s contrary to policy.
You don’t engage in pursuit when there’s not violence or a threat to the public.
Lippmann: With what the video shows, and what you had to go through to get access to it, who does that say more about – the officer or the department?
Watkins: The officer had nothing to do with whether or not that video was released, or whether the reports were released, or whether the findings of an internal investigation were turned over to the circuit attorney’s office or when they were turned over, or what IAD (Internal Affairs) wanted to do about this flawed cop.
What does that say about our city?
Our police department has had two years to get it together and they didn’t.
What does it say about our city when our circuit attorney has been sitting on this for two years?
What does it say when our mayor is deathly quiet while all this is occurring?
To add to that, that officer who violated every policy and procedure and killed this young man wasn’t terminated.
He was put on desk duty.
With pay.
So for two years, you and I and everyone in the city of St.
Louis are paying for that.
Lippmann: There is a lawsuit pending in a case from 2025 that alleges a different officer shot and wounded an unarmed man who was also fleeing from police after crashing a stolen vehicle.
Is this a symptom of a larger problem and if so, what is that problem?
Watkins: The problem goes back to hiring.
You’ve got to hire good people.
You have to have good people training.
You have to have good supervisory personnel from sergeants on up that maintain that discipline, that maintain that observance of protocols and special orders and procedures, and a nonstop recognition that the mission can never be compromised.
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