Grant Morrison, a Montana police officer who fatally shot an unarmed man in April, sobbed several minutes after the shooting occurred once he realized that the man didn’t have a gun, a dash-cam video recently released to the public reveals.
Morrison shot and killed Richard Ramirez, a 38-year-old man who was sitting in his car at the time of the shooting and “was high on meth,” according to the New York Daily News.
The video—obtained from the dash cam of another cop’s car—shows Morrison crying after the shooting and saying, “I thought he was going to pull a gun on me.”
Four individuals were sitting in the car at the time of the shooting. According to Morrison’s testimony during his trial, he pulled the car over and told all four individuals to put their hands up, but he found that one person—Ramirez—had not and that he “kept dropping his left hand to his waist” and looking like “he was going to get out,” Morrison said. Morrison said he warned Ramirez that he would shoot if he didn’t stop moving, but Ramirez did not comply. Morrison fired three shots into Ramirez’s chest, puncturing his lung.
On Wednesday a jury found that Morrison’s actions were justified. During his testimony, Morrison described how difficult the decision was to pull the trigger. “It’s the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make,” Morrison testified. “I wish I didn’t have to make it. I wish I just knew he didn’t have a gun, but I couldn’t take the risk.”
Morrison said that when he pulled Ramirez over, he didn’t know that the man was wanted for a robbery and shooting the day before.
The Ramirez case is not the first time Morrison has shot and killed someone. In 2013 he shot and killed James Shaw after a routine traffic stop. Shaw, who can be heard on this dash-cam video here, with the shooting taking place just out of the sight of the camera, was first hit with a Taser, then shot and killed by Morrison. Another officer told a coroner’s inquest jury that Shaw “had a crazed look on his face” the night of the fatal encounter with Morrison, according to the Billings Gazette, and Morrison was not charged in Shaw’s death.
Read more at the New York Daily News and the Billings Gazette.