Thursday, April 09, 2015

Man Who Filmed S.C. Police Shooting: Maybe God ‘Put Me There For a Reason’

April 9 at 7:35 AM
Lindsey Bever

Like he usually does, 23-year-old Feidin Santana, a Dominican immigrant to South Carolina, was walking to his job at a barbershop on Saturday afternoon, talking on his cellphone. Glancing over a chain-link fence that separated him from a scrubby patch of ground at the side of the road, something caught his eye and his ear. What he saw and heard — and what he did about it despite a deep-seated fear of the consequences — would soon shock the nation.

And it would change him, perhaps forever. “My life…changed in a matter of seconds,” he said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe Thursday.

Santana shot the video Saturday showing a white officer firing his pistol at a fleeing, unarmed black man. So powerful and troubling were the frames captured by Santana that North Charleston Police Chief Eddie Driggers would later describe himself as “sickened” by what he had seen. The officer, Michael Slager, 33, would be charged with murder.

Santana laid low, frightened for days, before and then after, handing the video over to the Scott family. Then on Wednesday, he spoke out, in broken English, describing the ordeal he had been through in interviews on MSNBC, NBC Nightly News and Thursday on MSNBC’s Morning Joe.

What he saw was a struggle going on between a black man and the white police officer. “I saw Mr. Scott running on the same street I’m heading to my job,” he said on Morning Joe. “Then I saw the officer chasing him. I just decided to chase them to see what was happening.”

What he heard was the sickening electric sound of a clicking Taser. That’s when Santana ended the phone call, he told reporters, and started filming, running to keep up with the action. “I was hearing the taser sound,” Santana said, “and the yellling of Mr. Scott and that’s when I decided to do the recording.”

“Before I started recording, they were down on the floor,” he told NBC Nightly News’ Lester Holt. “I remember the police [officer] had control of the situation. He had control of Scott. And Scott was trying just to get away from the Taser. But like I said, he never used the Taser against the cop.”

“As you can see in the video, the police officer just shot him in the back,” he added. “I knew right away, I had something on my hands.”

Still, Santana said he was afraid of what he had — video footage that contradicted what police had reported. He was afraid of what might happen to him if he handed it over to police. He did go to the police station but only briefly, he told interviewers. He was asked to wait when he arrived, but decided not to.

“I felt that my life, with this information, might be in danger,” he told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes. “I thought about erasing the video and just getting out of the community, you know Charleston, and living some place else.” On Morning Joe, he added that his family was “afraid of what would happen to me.”

But he heard how police were describing the killing — that Scott had grabbed the Taser — and that bothered Santana. “I knew the cop didn’t do the right thing,” he said.

On Sunday afternoon, Santana returned to the scene. He said he thought about the victim’s family and knew they would want to know the truth. He finally decided to make contact with them. “I felt a need to look for justice,” he said.

Santana went to a vigil for Scott, according to victim’s brother, Anthony Scott, and told him, “I have something to share with you,” according to the Los Angles Times. He began to play the video.

When the family saw it, Santana told Holt, “they were very emotional.”

On Tuesday night, the video was released to Charleston’s Post and Courier and the New York Times. It was played for the world — and Slager, 33, was charged with murder.

The footage showing Saturday’s shooting is key because it presents evidence that directly contradicts the Slager’s account, which ultimately led the officer’s murder charge. Since it was released, many have praised Santana for stepping on a very public stage, including Scott’s family attorneys.

People on social media are calling Santana a hero. A Facebook page called “Fans of Feidin Santana” popped up late Wednesday night, calling him an “American hero,” a “patriot” and an “angel on earth.” Fans were talking about setting a GoFundMe page to raise donations for a reward.


“I’m proud of you because you have the courage to do the right thing so this criminal can pay for his crime,” one commenter wrote. “…We need more people like you on this earth so we can stop the abuse and the killing of our Black and Latino brothers by law enforcement. God bless you.”

Early Thursday morning, Santana posted a reply on the page.

“Hey guys … as you can see my English is not my first language,” he wrote. “But I’m very thankful of everyone support. Even though this is very new to me and my family but never imagined that this will turn with so much love (which make it a little bit easy for me). Thank you for everything! For all those kind words … thank you.

“We all equal, we all human, let’s love each other and stop all this killings in our world.”

Asked how he summoned up the courage to take the video in full view of police, he told Morning Joe: “I don’t know what happened to me at that moment to be honest. I’m a great believer in God. Maybe he put me there for some reason.” Maybe, he said, that let him put his fear aside. “Maybe I tried to act like a reporter or something.”

“It’s not something that no one can feel happy about.” The officer “has his family, Mr. Scott also has his family,” Santana told Lester Holt. “But I think, you know, he [the officer] made a bad decision, and you pay for your decisions in this life.”

In North Charleston, urgent promises of change to avoid another Ferguson

Lindsey Bever is a national news reporter for The Washington Post. She writes for the Morning Mix news blog. Tweet her: @lindseybever

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