Washington: Police in the US state of New Mexico released footage Friday showing officers shooting a man dead after responding to the wrong address.
The Farmington Police Department released body camera videos and 911 audio of the incident on April 5, in which three officers knocked on the door of the wrong house.
They were responding to a call about domestic violence from 5308 Valley View Ave but footage shows the officers arriving at a house marked “5305.”
Chief Steve Hebbe ordered the release under state law “and out of a desire to be forthcoming and transparent with the Farmington community, the general public, and the news media,” the department said in a statement.
The footage shows the officers knocking on the door several times and identifying themselves.
The officers then request confirmation of the address from dispatch and discuss whether they are at the wrong house.
Moments later, a man opens the door and points a firearm at the officers before they draw and immediately fire their weapons.
The victim, Robert Dotson, died at the scene, police said.
A woman later identified as Dotson’s wife appears at the door about a minute later and more shots are fired. Police said she fired a gun at the officers.
The department said the names of the three officers involved, which were redacted from the footage and audio, could not be released due to the ongoing investigation.
It remains unclear why the officers, who are on paid leave for the length of the investigation, approached the wrong address, police said.
In one of the 911 audio files released, Dotson’s daughter can be heard crying before saying that her mother was screaming and her father had been shot.
“All of us — the men and women of the Farmington Police Department — recognize the severity of this incident,” Hebbe said.
“Once again, we wish to express our condolences to the Dotson family and as your chief of police, I wish to convey how very sorry I am that this tragedy occurred.”
About 40 percent of US households have guns, according to the Pew Research Center.
There were an estimated 44,000 gun-related deaths in the United States last year, about half of them murder cases, accidents and self-defense, and half of them suicides, according to the Gun Violence Archive database.
It showed that 14 people have been shot or killed in what the archive terms “officer-involved incidents” in New Mexico this year.
More than 5,000 people in the United States have died of firearm-related violence in 2023, according to the archive.
US police kill man after responding to wrong address, video shows
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US police kill man after responding to wrong address, video shows
- The footage shows the officers knocking on the door several times and identifying themselves
- There were an estimated 44,000 gun-related deaths in the United States last year, about half of them murder cases
French court slashes jails term for trio over 2020 teacher beheading
- Brahim Chnina, the Moroccan father of a girl who falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing the caricatures, had his 13-year sentence reduced to 10 years
PARIS, France: A French court on Monday reduced on appeal the jail sentences of three men convicted over the 2020 terrorist beheading of a teacher who showed a class cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
Samuel Paty, 47, was murdered in October 2020 by an 18-year-old radical Islamist of Chechen origin in an act that horrified France.
His attacker, Abdoullakh Anzorov, was killed in a shootout with police.
Two friends of Anzorov, French national Naim Boudaoud and Azim Epsirkhanov, a Russian of Chechen origin, had their sentences of 16 years in prison reduced to six and seven years respectively by a Paris court of appeal.
Both were accused of having driven Anzorov and helping him to procure weapons before the beheading.
Brahim Chnina, the Moroccan father of a girl who falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing the caricatures, had his 13-year sentence reduced to 10 years.
His daughter, then aged 13, was not actually in the classroom at the time and during the first trial apologized to the teacher’s family.
The court however left the 15-year term for French-Moroccan Islamist activist Abdelhakim Sefrioui untouched.
The quartet were among the seven men and one woman found guilty in 2024 of contributing to the climate of hatred that led to the beheading of the history and geography teacher in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, west of Paris.
Paty, who has become a free-speech icon, used the cartoons as part of an ethics class to discuss freedom of expression laws in France.
