Video recorded by a witness appears to show a suspect running away from a D.C. police cruiser moments before police fatally shot him Tuesday evening.
About 6:10 p.m., 29-year-old Surafel Zerihun was driving a white sedan southbound on Georgia Avenue NW when he drove into oncoming traffic and struck a northbound police cruiser at Morton Street, police said.
“After the collision, the suspect got out of his vehicle, produced a knife and reached into the officer's cruiser through the open window, and demanded the officer's service weapon while swinging the knife towards the officer,” Metropolitan Police Department Chief Pamela Smith said. “The officer retreated to the passenger seat of the cruiser and gave loud verbal commands for the suspect to get back. The suspect continued to swing the knife towards the officer, and the officer discharged his service weapon.”
Zerihun then got into another police cruiser in the same block, police said.
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More offices arrived and demanded Zerihun get out of the cruiser and drop the knife, according to police. He got out of the cruiser and tried to carjack a woman leaving a laundromat parking lot, opening her driver’s side door.
That’s when he was shot again by an officer, police said. He died at the scene.
Nana Bawa started recording with his phone when he heard sirens and shouts.
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“The cops kind of surrounding the cruiser and was like, ‘Get out, get out,’ whatever,” Bawa said. “And so he gets out, and I saw him kind of confused or whatever, and then all he did was run over there with his back facing them.”
Bawa’s video shows the man shirtless and wearing a ski mask as he got out of the cruiser and ran up the street toward the laundromat. Gunshots are heard, but the video doesn’t show Zerihun getting shot.
Bawa wonders if police should have done more to deescalate the situation before the fatal shots were fired.
“I know what he did wasn’t right, you know, but I felt like there was a better way it could have been solved than what I saw,” he said.
Forest Hayward was standing outside his shop when he saw the man coming across the street, appearing to be wounded.
“In all honesty, I believe the officers were doing the best they could to protect the public, because of the incident that took place, because he did hit a cop car, and then he was coming across the street, and as you see, there are a lot of people out here during the day,” Hayward said.
The officers involved are on administrative leave.
A couple hours earlier – and just a couple blocks away at Georgia Avenue and Quebec Place – an officer saw two men firing weapons and opened fire on them, but no one was hit. Those gunmen ran from the scene.
Police said the incidents are not related.
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