Remember Faith Ekakitie?
The University of Iowa defensive end was playing Pokémon Go in an Iowa City, Iowa, park last week when officers came up on him and drew their guns because he supposedly fit the description of a bank robber.
Ekakitie described his experience with the officers in great detail in a post that went viral on Facebook last week.
Now, according to the Los Angeles Times, Iowa City police have released body-cam videos of the encounter, which pretty much show that it happened exactly as Ekakitie described.
You can see officers approaching the hulking football player as he plays his video game. Police say that Ekakitie fit the description of an armed man who had just tried to rob a bank nearby. Ekakitie cooperates fully with officers while they work to determine that he is not the suspect and search the 23-year-old senior thoroughly.
“Just keep your hands up,” one of the officers tells Ekakitie as they close in on him. “It’s probably not you, but we gotta check, you understand?”
In the video, Ekakitie and officers can be heard engaging in small talk as they search his bag and waistband and pat him down.
“Will not lie to you, I was terrified,” Ekakitie tells the officers.
“Sorry, we don’t really like doing that, but you get it,” one officer responds.
In his July 20 Facebook post, Ekakitie wrote that that day "was the first time I've truly feared for my life."
“I am not one to usually rant on Facebook or anywhere else, but with all of the crazy things that have been happening in our world these past couple of weeks it is hard to stay silent. I am thankful to be alive, and I do now realize, that it very well could have been me, a friend of mine, my brother, your cousin, your nephew etc. Misunderstandings happen all the time and just like that things can go south very quickly. It is extremely sad that our society has brainwashed us all to the point where we can’t feel safe being approached by the police officers in our respective communities. Not all police officers are out to get you, but at the same time, not all people who fit a criminal profile are criminals,” he wrote.
In the end, Ekakitie thanked the police for their "handling of a sensitive situation very professionally."
Read more at the Los Angeles Times.