Snohomish County investigators released video footage on Thursday, Jan. 28 of a deadly officer-involved shooting in July 2020. The video appears to show a Bothell police officer firing multiple rounds.
The Snohomish County SMART team released the footage at the request of the family of Rene Hummel, who died after a confrontation with police in July.
Bothell Police said, at the time, that Hummel had lunged at an officer with a knife after that officer had responded to a neighborhood for complaints that someone was slashing tires.
Hummel’s family, at a press conference in September, criticized the lack of answers from police and said the 25-year-old had been shot three times in the back.
The video shows what appears to be Hummel running down a street, before ducking behind a couple of bushes. After a police cruiser, with lights flashing, pulls up in his general vicinity, Hummel appears to dart out from behind the bushes and charge at the officer.
It is not entirely clear from the video if a knife is present. The officer can be seen firing multiple rounds before Hummel collapsed on the street.
The video also shows that officers attempted to revive Hummel roughly four minutes after the shooting, and an ambulance arrived roughly seven minutes after. Hummel died at the hospital.
One of the Hummel family attorneys, Fred Langer, told KING 5 on Thursday that the video “reinforces the belief that it was a needless shooting.”
Langer said, while Hummel did have mental health issues, he had never shown any propensity for violence, and that an autopsy showed the fatal shot was fired as Hummel was falling to the ground. Langer argues that the officer did not attempt to offer any de-escalation techniques either, in violation of I-940.
Bothell Police Spokesperson Cam Johnson said Thursday that the officer involved in the deadly confrontation is back on duty.
“Following the incident, the officer was immediately placed on administrative duty, pending an administrative review. Since I-940 requires completely independent investigations, we conducted a review separate from the SMART investigation. Based on our initial review, and limited briefings received from SMART, we recently placed the officer back on patrol.”
Bothell Police do not have body cameras, and the officer was not wearing one. However, when asked whether the officer was equipped with a taser or other non-lethal tools, Johnson wrote “Yes."
