Police in North Carolina have released footage Wednesday of an officer fatally shooting a 47-year-old Vietnamese woman holding a meat cleaver. According to Greensboro Police Chief Wayne Scott, Greensboro police as and the State Bureau of Investigation have said the fatal shooting was "justified and reasonable."
Greensboro Police Officer Timothy "TJ" Bloch fatally shot Chieu Di Thi Vo on March 25, 2014, the New York Daily News reported. Bloch arrived at the Aberdeen Townhomes after someone called the police about a fight reports the Greensboro Police Department.
The 911 call, which was also released by the Greensboro Police Department on Wednesday, reported Triad City Beat, contained the following:
"Can you please send someone over here to the area of 4027 Hewitt Street? There’s a little Filipino woman. She’s not right. She’s chasing her mother with a meat cleaver."
The graphic video (recorded by Bloch's body camera) shows him arriving on the scene, and immediately he's heard screaming "Where is she? Is this her?" As Vo, holding the meat cleaver, gets closer to Bloch he screams, "Hey, put it down! Put it down!" Bloch then shoots her a few times before she falls down.
The New York Daily Newsreported Greensboro Police Chief Wayne Scott said in a news conference Wednesday, "I believe it's readily apparent that she's looking directly at him and she's heading directly at him. She does not change her course until after the first shots are actually fired."
According to the New York Daily News, Bloch went on to resign later in 2014.
Executive director of the advocacy group Southeast Asian Coalition Cat Le told the New York Daily News, "It raises a lot of questions in our community of immigrants and refugees who don't speak English." She added, "There's a lot of folks here that believe the policies need to be looked at."
In a letter posted by Vo's family on the coalition’s website it pointed out that despite what initial police reports said Vo didn't: lunge at Bloch, threaten her mother, nor did she yell at Bloch in Vietnamese.
The family also wrote that Bloch could've avoided "lethal force."
"From the 5-6 times that we watched the video last Tuesday, it appeared that Bloch stood approximately 10-15 feet away from Chieu Di and only waited for a couple seconds before he started opening fire on her," the family wrote. "Within that distance, Bloch did not have to respond to Chieu Di with lethal force as she was not an imminent threat to his life."
A 13-year-old boy in Baltimore was recently victim to a fatal police shooting after his fake pistol was mistaken for a real handgun.
