What we know — and what we don’t — from video of Hemingway police shooting
Attorneys representing Robert Junior Langley, an unarmed Black man fatally shot by a Hemingway police officer in February, released dashboard camera video of the incident on Tuesday.
The video reveals additional details about the shooting that ended Langley’s life, but leaves some questions unanswered.
Cassandra Dollard, a Black officer, was charged with voluntary manslaughter last month and fired from her job. She is free on bond.
Unanswered question
Perhaps the most significant unanswered question is why Dollard engaged with Langley in the first place.
In the dashcam video, Langley can be seen driving down a neighborhood street, and Dollard’s police vehicle is parked perpendicularly on the side of the road.
As Langley approaches, Dollard turns her blue lights on and pulls out to follow him.
Once Dollard’s cruiser is behind Langley’s vehicle, he is seen rolling through a stop sign, and stopping somewhere between the sign and the intersection.
Dollard radios the location of the traffic stop. Langley is then seen making a right-hand turn and speeding away.
He later runs a red light as Dollard pursues him.
Later in the video, after Dollard and other officers performed CPR and the fatally wounded Langley was carried away on a stretcher, Dollard explains her version of events to fellow officers.
“I stopped him for a traffic violation. He stopped before I could get out of the car to get to him and took off, and here we are,” Dollard said in the video.
It remains unclear what traffic law Langley violated.
Arrest warrants for Dollard, who was booked into jail last month, said she pulled him over for running the stop sign.
The video, though, appears to show Dollard turning on her blue lights before Langley reached the stop sign.
Dollard’s arrest warrant further stated Langley disregarded traffic signals and reached a speed of more than 100 mph during the pursuit.
Ryan Alphin, a spokesperson for the South Carolina State Law Enforcement Division, didn’t immediately return a request for comment about what caused Dollard to begin her pursuit.
The attorneys representing Langley’s family also weren’t immediately available for comment.
What the video shows
After Dollard pursues Langley for approximately five minutes, Langley drives into a ditch and crashes his vehicle against a telephone pole.
Dollard orders him to stay in the car and show his hands.
Langley complies and both of his hands are clearly visible sticking out of his car window.
At the 6:30 mark in the video, Dollard can be seen walking around the hood of her car, approaching Langley’s vehicle.
As she approaches with her gun drawn, Langley opens the passenger door.
Dollard trips and falls, though her gun remains pointed into the car.
“Don’t you come out of there,” Dollard can be heard telling Langley as he begins to leave the car on his stomach.
She then shoots him once.
Langley falls out of the car and onto the ground near where Dollard sat.
Langley says something to Dollard, but it’s inaudible in the video.
Dollard replies: “You had something in your hand, sir.”
It’s not clear what Langley held in his hand, but he was unarmed, SLED determined.
“Central, be advised, one shot fired, he had something in his hand,” Dollard radioed to Hemingway Police headquarters shortly after shooting Langley.
As Langley lies on the ground, Dollard continues to ask him what he held in his hands.
In the video, she tells the victim she called paramedics to the scene at the intersection of School House Road and Choppee Road in Georgetown County.
Shortly after that, Dollard moves Langley’s legs and arms and begins performing CPR. She can be heard counting out loud as she keeps pace.
“There you go, sir, keep breathing for me,” she said in the video.
CPR, performed by Dollard and other officers who arrive on scene later, continues for several minutes.
Dollard repeatedly speaks to Langley as she performs chest compressions.
Around the 18-minute mark in the video, Dollard and another officer confirm Langley still has a pulse.
An ambulance arrives several minutes later and paramedics can be seen strapping Langley to a stretcher and loading him into the back.
The Georgetown County coroner later said Langley died at the Tidelands Georgetown Memorial Hospital.
After Langley is placed in the ambulance, other police officers attempt to comfort Dollard.
She explained what happened from her point of view.
She said she shot him because she thought he had something in his hands.
“I don’t know what he had in his hand,” she said. “I just know he had something in his hand.”
Civil rights attorney Bakari Sellers, who is representing Langley’s family, said the dashcam video showed Dollard was “out of her depth.”
“It’s clear from the video that Officer Dollard was out of her depth,” Sellers said in a statement. “She never should have been cleared to wear a badge and carry a gun and Robert Junior Langley paid for it with his life.”
Langley’s mother added in the statement released Tuesday that Dollard killed her son “for nothing.”
“When people watch this video, I hope they realize that this isn’t just some statistic,” Roslyn Brockington Langley said.
“He was a father, a brother, a son and they killed him for nothing,” she said. “They left a hole in our lives and it could happen to anyone.”
This story was originally published March 22, 2022 at 1:20 PM.
