A St. Louis police officer fatally shot 17-year-old Emeshyon Wilkins in the back of the head as the teen ran away, not while he pointed a gun at officers, as police initially told the public. Body camera footage released Monday exposed the gap between what the department said happened on June 18, 2024, and what its own cameras recorded, CBS News reported.
The video does not show Wilkins holding or pointing a firearm. One of four bullets struck him in the back of the head, killing him. He had turned 17 just two weeks earlier.
The footage came to light not because the St. Louis Police Department released it voluntarily, but because the Wilkins family's attorney, Al Watkins, obtained it through the discovery process in a federal lawsuit against the department. Watkins told the Associated Press that his office tried and failed to get the video through a public records request before resorting to litigation.
That is a damning sequence for a department that now claims it values transparency.
On June 18, 2024, St. Louis detectives attempted to stop an SUV reported stolen. A brief pursuit followed. Watkins described it as a slow-speed chase, with the vehicle traveling around 10 miles per hour. Wilkins then fled on foot.
Two officers gave chase. The federal lawsuit filed by the family states that one officer held a taser and the other a firearm. The officer with the firearm yelled commands and fired four shots. One struck Wilkins in the back of the head, killing him.
The lawsuit also states that a firearm was found in Wilkins' pocket, but it was disassembled, in multiple pieces, and incapable of being fired. The teen was not holding it. The video shows no furtive movements by Wilkins as he ran.
Yet the department's earlier public account told a different story: that the teen had pointed a gun at officers. The department acknowledged Monday that this narrative was wrong. In a statement, police said "information provided by a third-party to investigators in the immediate aftermath of the incident was not consistent with the actual events or what was initially shared with the community."
In other words, someone fed investigators a false account, and the department ran with it, apparently without first reviewing its own body camera footage. The department itself conceded as much, stating, "In this case, an earlier review of body-worn camera footage would have provided greater clarity than what was available in the initial moments following the incident."
That admission raises an obvious question: Why didn't anyone review the footage sooner? The department now says it has updated its protocols so that a member of its body-worn camera unit "responds directly" to the scene, allowing investigating commanders to review footage before relying on secondhand accounts from the public. The fact that this was not already standard procedure is itself a failure.
Watkins did not hold back in his criticism of the department's handling of the case. He expressed his views to the Associated Press:
"They fought that video issue for over a year. We had to file a federal lawsuit to get it. That's not transparent. That's not integrity. Indeed, it's irresponsible."
The attorney said residents of St. Louis and Missouri "deserve better than this." He also noted that the officer who killed Wilkins was placed on desk duty with pay, a detail that will be familiar to anyone who has followed police accountability cases across the country.
Bodycam footage has become a critical tool for establishing what actually happened during police encounters. In a recent New York case involving an officer shooting a knife-wielding man, released video helped the public assess the officer's split-second decision. Here, the footage does the opposite, it undercuts the official account.
Wilkins' mother, Shaina Wilkins, told CBS affiliate KMOV that authorities still had not provided a full explanation. She said her son "should still be here."
In an interview, she added simply:
"I'm still waiting, I need answers."
Those answers have been slow in coming. The St. Louis Circuit Attorney's Office said it received the police investigative report in October, roughly four months after the shooting. The office said it is conducting its own "review of the evidence and law to determine whether there is a basis for criminal liability." It pledged to review the matter "as expeditiously as possible while ensuring that all available evidence and legal considerations are carefully and thoroughly evaluated."
Whether that review produces charges, a declination, or more delay remains an open question. No criminal charge against the officer has been publicly reported.
Department spokesperson Mitch McCoy offered carefully worded remarks Monday. "We recognize that the use of deadly force is difficult for everyone involved and for the community," McCoy said. He added, "We are committed to being as transparent as possible, even in dynamic and rapidly evolving situations."
Watkins pushed back hard on the transparency claim. AP News reported that the footage was obtained only through the federal lawsuit, not through the department's voluntary disclosure. The family's attorney noted that his records request was rebuffed and that the department resisted turning over the video for more than a year.
There is a pattern worth noting. When bodycam footage from Tiger Woods' DUI arrest was released, it provided the public with a clear, unedited record of what happened during a police encounter. The principle is the same whether the subject is a celebrity or a teenager: the footage exists precisely so the public does not have to rely on anyone's after-the-fact narrative.
Watkins framed the stakes in broad terms, telling the Associated Press that "time is of the essence" and "the lives of our children are at stake." He also said the nation and the world are watching St. Louis, calling it "a vulnerable time in the U.S., one which requires adults in the room to act responsibly and without delay or gamesmanship."
St. Louis carries particular weight in these matters. The city's suburb of Ferguson became a national flashpoint in 2014 after the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown by a white police officer. That case reshaped the national conversation about police use of force and community trust. A decade later, the Wilkins case tests whether the institutions in and around St. Louis have actually changed, or whether the same patterns of delayed disclosure and contradicted accounts persist.
Several key facts remain publicly unknown. The name of the officer who fired the shots has not been released. The specific federal court and case number for the family's lawsuit have not been disclosed in available reporting. No explanation has been offered for why the department relied on a third-party account without reviewing its own camera footage first, beyond the belated admission that doing so would have "provided greater clarity."
It is also unclear what, if anything, the circuit attorney's office has done since receiving the investigative report in October. The office's statement was procedural, not substantive. In other cases involving public officials and law enforcement, the public has rightly expected timely accountability. The Wilkins family has waited months.
Watkins said the family "needs answers, and the only way answers can be given is if there is justice that is open and transparent." That is not an unreasonable demand. A 17-year-old was shot in the back of the head while running away. The department's initial story was false. The video that proved it false was withheld for over a year. And the officer remains on paid desk duty.
Conservative principles demand accountability from government institutions, especially those entrusted with the power to use lethal force. Supporting law enforcement means holding officers and departments to the standards that earn public trust. When a department puts out a false account, resists releasing its own footage, and then claims to value transparency only after being forced into disclosure by a federal lawsuit, that trust erodes. And it erodes for everyone: for the families who deserve honest answers, for the officers who do their jobs with integrity, and for communities already skeptical of the institutions meant to protect them.
Transparency is not a slogan. It is the minimum a department owes the public when one of its officers takes a life. St. Louis failed that standard, and no protocol update changes what the video already shows.
