The deaths included two police shootings, one of which was streamed live on Facebook, and an officer fatally striking a pregnant woman with his car .
On Thursday, Indianapolis police faced increasing pressure to provide answers to an eight-hour shock period in the city in which police officers killed three people.
A man shot by the police while he streamed the encounter live on Facebook, a pregnant woman who was fatally struck by an officer’s car, and a 19-year-old man who may have called 911 to lure the police to an apartment before firing at them.
Scores of protesters, many of them wearing masks, gathered downtown on Thursday, in a rare display of public grief and outrage in a city still largely shut down because of the coronavirus. Much of the protesters’ concern was directed at the first of the three encounters, in which Dreasjon Reed, 21, was shot and killed while running from a police officer after a brief car chase on Wednesday evening.
The demonstration came after the police released new details about the shooting and vowed to take disciplinary action against an investigator who heard a Facebook video laughing suspiciously about the funeral of Mr. Reid.
The police said the chase began when the department’s chief and deputy chief noticed Mr. Reed driving recklessly and sought to pull him over, at which point Mr. Reed continued to drive and began recording himself on Facebook Live, saying he did not want to go to jail and pleading with someone to come get him. The chase was called off, but as Mr. Reed left the car and fled on foot, another nearby officer ran after him, shooting and killing him.
Randal Taylor, the police chief, said at a news conference on Thursday that a gun had been found near Mr. Reed and that it appeared it had been fired twice. He said that, in total, 15 shell casings had been recovered from the two guns, seemingly indicating that the officer had fired 13 shots, many of which can be heard on the Facebook video. The officer has not been identified, but the police said that he and Mr. Reed were both black men.
After the shooting, while Mr. Reid was dead on the ground, his phone kept recording. In the video, a man can be heard outside the camera laughing as he says, "I think it will be a closed coffin, Homy," apparently referring to Mr. Reid's funeral. Taylor's chief said the comment was made by one of the informants and that the administration plans to discipline the officer.
His comments are unacceptable and unbecoming of our police department,” Chief Taylor said, adding that the detective had not been at the scene until after Mr. Reed was shot. “We will be pursuing immediate disciplinary action against that officer.”
In posts on Facebook, family members said that Mr. Reid, known as Sean, was previously a member of the Air Force.
His mother wrote on Facebook that seeing your son shot and killed on FACEBOOK Live is a different kind of harm.
The second death came less than four hours after Mr. Reid was killed, when an officer beat a pregnant woman with his car while driving to work. Police said that the woman, identified by the pathologist, as Asheline Lisby, 23, and her unborn child, died in hospital.
Chief Taylor said that a preliminary investigation, which included drawing blood from the officer, Jonathon Henderson, showed no indication that the officer was impaired, and that he had tried to resuscitate the victim. Chief Taylor said the woman was walking on an on-ramp to a highway when she was struck, and was wearing dark clothing and near a broken streetlight.
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