Timothy Michael Randall was 29 years old when he was stopped by a police officer on a Texas highway. What began as a traffic stop ended with the young man shot in the chest.
It was the early morning of September 14, 2022. Randall had been stopped for allegedly failing to obey a traffic sign. He got out of his car and kept his hands visible while Sergeant Shane Iversen tried to detain him.
According to footage from the police vehicle’s camera, Randall even said: “Officer, I don’t have anything on me” and then asked why he was being arrested.
The officer knocked him down during the struggle. Randall managed to get back up and began running away. Iversen shouted “Get down!” and fired. The bullet tore through his ribs, lungs, and heart.
Randall fell a few yards farther on and died at the scene.
But what happened next was captured in the audio. After calling for an ambulance and returning to his patrol car, Iversen called a colleague and uttered a phrase that would later become one of the most controversial elements of the case:
“I just shot a guy”.
The officer later said he had believed Randall was carrying a weapon. In his pockets, however, they found an eyeglass case containing a pipe for smoking methamphetamine, not a firearm. Tests also detected methamphetamine, marijuana, and a small amount of alcohol in Randall’s system.
A grand jury decided not to indict the officer, who later retired. Randall’s family filed a lawsuit and succeeded in having the footage made public nearly two years after the shooting. Experts consulted by NBC News questioned whether there had been a threat that justified the use of deadly force.
Now, the footage makes it possible to reconstruct the final seconds of a man who got out of his car during a traffic stop and ended up dead on a highway.
And the phrase the officer uttered afterward remains one of the most disturbing parts of the case.
Watch the clip here: