Ricardo Hayes, then 18, was shot and wounded in the arm and chest by an off-duty police officer, Sgt Khalil Muhammad. The teenager's family had reported Hayes missing only hours before, advising police he had developmental problems and autism. The police officer is heard on a 911 call saying that Hayes had a gun and he shot in self-defence, but the family is now suing for excessive use of force. The incident happened in August 2017 but the video has only just been released.

Mentacide refers to the deliberate, systematic destruction of a group's mind, Dr. Bobby Wright says it is the ultimate threat to Black people’s survival [MORE].

From [HERE] and [HERE] CHICAGO’S CIVILIAN OFFICE of Police Accountability, or COPA, today released video footage of the August 13, 2017 shooting of an African-American teenager named Ricardo Hayes by police officer Khalil Muhammad.

Viewed against the backdrop of the recently concluded trial of officer Jason Van Dyke for the murder of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, the release of the Hayes video is an occasion to ask what has and has not changed since the release of the McDonald video in the fall of 2015 precipitated a political upheaval and demands for reform.

At the time of the incident, Ricky Hayes was 19 years old, but apart from his height, everything about him was childlike. He is developmentally and intellectually disabled. He looks like a child and has the mind of a child. A ward of the state, he lives with a caretaker in a neighborhood on the far south side of the city.

According to his lawyer Gabriel Hardy, Hayes frequently sneaks out of the house and has a history of getting lost out in the city. At roughly 1:25 a.m. on August 13, 2017, his caretaker checked his room and found that he wasn’t there. She immediately called the police to report him missing. About half an hour later, police officers arrived. The caretaker filled out a missing person report and told the officers about Hayes’s disabilities.

In a civil suit against Muhammad and the city of Chicago, Hardy alleges that multiple surveillance cameras recorded Hayes as he wandered his neighborhood. Dressed in shorts, a short sleeve shirt, and sneakers, he can be seen skipping and singing to himself.

At about 5:00 a.m. Muhammad, who was off-duty and was driving his own pick-up truck, saw Hayes and began chasing him. At one point, he drove his truck up on the sidewalk within a few feet of Hayes. Frightened, the boy ran away. The officer continued the pursuit.

Eventually, Hayes stopped running and stood motionless with his hands at his sides on the front lawn of a house. What happened next was captured by a surveillance camera mounted on that house.

Muhammad pulled up and stopped roughly 20 feet from Hayes. Sitting in the cab of his truck, he opened fire with his service weapon, striking Hayes in his chest and arm. Wounded, Hayes again ran away. Muhammad pursued him in his truck, caught up with him, and ordered him to lie face down on the ground.

Muhammad then called 911 and requested an ambulance. I obtained an audio recording of the call through a Freedom of Information Act request. When the dispatcher asks what happened, Muhammad replies, “The guy pulled like he was about to pull a gun on me, walked up to the car, and I had to shoot.” [MORE]