Matt Schooley is a digital producer at CBS Boston. He has been a member of the WBZ news team for the last decade.
The family of a man shot and killed by a Boston police officer last month in Roxbury is calling for body camera footage from the incident to be released.
Stephenson King's family members and high-profile civil rights attorney Ben Crump held a news conference on Thursday to call for "real accountability" in the case. They said he has long dealt with mental health issues, showing signs of schizophrenia and paranoia.
Investigators said Boston Police officer Nicholas O'Malley shot King three times through the driver's side window of an allegedly stolen car while he was trying to flee.
O'Malley said that he fired the shots because he believed King was trying to run him and his partner over with the car.
A Boston Police Department report from the incident determined that "regardless of their perception, that statement was factually not true." O'Malley was arrested and pleaded not guilty to manslaughter.
Police said there is body camera footage of the incident, but it is not being released at that time. King's family and several city councilors have called for the release of the footage.
During his news conference on Thursday, Crump called for the video to be released in the name of transparency.
"We want everybody to understand that transparency is good for everybody. If the officer did nothing wrong, then we should be able to see it on the video. If the officer did something wrong, we should be able to see it on the video," Crump said. "Consequently, if Stephenson did something wrong, we should be able to see it on the video. Because transparency is good for all of us. It's good for the family, and it's good for the Boston Police Department."
Crump said that King has dealt with mental health challenges since 2009. According to the attorney, King experienced a mental health crisis the day of his death and his family had an ambulance come to the house and take him to the hospital. Crump said King somehow got out of the hospital and went to another medical facility in the hours before the encounter with Boston police.
"Mental health is a very real issue. I pray that if you have family members who have mental health issues, when they have encounters with police, they will give them a helping hand and not three bullets in their body taking them from this world," Crump said.
Stephenson King Sr. spoke at the news conference about his son's death. He said that he had been trying to get his son help, even recently asking a judge to intervene.
"He shouldn't be dead," King Sr. said. "I'm hurt, disappointed in everything that's happened. The day I put my son in an ambulance, I wasn't expecting him to be dead that night."
King's sister Ebony said that before his death, her brother was so paranoid that he would place tape over cellphone cameras, wall outlets, and the emblems on his sneakers because he believed he was being watched.
On Thursday, defense attorney David Yannetti announced that his firm will be representing O'Malley.
Yannetti called O'Malley "a good man who finds himself falsely accused of manslaughter because he performed his sworn duty and defended his fellow officers when confronted by a dangerous criminal with an established history of violence and felonies."
Yannetti was the first attorney to represent Karen Read during her high-profile Massachusetts murder trial. He remained a key member of her defense through both of her trials. After a mistrial due to hung jury, Read was acquitted of all charges except operating under the influence during her retrial.