The family of a Black man fatally shot by an off-duty police officer in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has deemed the shooting “justified.”
Elijah Wilks, 26, was fatally shot on Thursday, Oct. 9, after assaulting the unidentified officer, who was on his way to work, the New York Post reports. Police footage, released at the family’s request to prevent misinformation and protests, shows the two men involved in a minor crash, exiting their vehicles and exchanging words before Wilks draws his gun and strikes the officer with it.
The footage shows the officer backing away and Wilks raising his handgun and aiming directly at him. The action prompts the officer to fire his department-issued weapon in self-defense.
Wilks was pronounced dead at the scene. The confrontation lasted 26 seconds.
Although the department usually waits 15 days before releasing footage of officer-involved shootings, Wilks’ family requested its immediate release to “quell misinformation.”
It was released four days after the incident, a move the Milwaukee Police said was done “in the interest of transparency.”
“We will acknowledge that we believe this officer-involved shooting was justified,” the family’s attorney, B’Ivory LaMarr, said at a news conference. “We acknowledge that (Wilks) made a bad decision yesterday and unfortunately it came with dire consequences.”
LaMarr acknowledged the officer acted “in accordance with his training.”
“The Wilks family has seen the truth for themselves. Now they want the public to see it, too. They are choosing truth over rumor — transparency over division,” he added.
Wilks’ family said Elijah Wilks was on his way to his uncle’s funeral when the incident occurred, suggesting grief may have contributed to his uncharacteristic behavior. His aunt, Latrice Bell, said the family does not plan to pursue legal action and is “at peace” with what the video revealed.
“What this family has done is made the difficult decision, while they’re grieving, to put aside their privacy, put aside their grieving to allow again the opportunity for accountability to actually exist where the public can see what they saw,” LaMarr said. “And just try to move past the situation and heal this city.”
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