A neighbor whose 911 call led to the fatal police shooting of Stephon Clark in California last month now regrets calling police, according to a report.
Dave Reiling was at his Sacramento home March 18 when he heard the sound of breaking glass and went outside to discover the windows of his two trucks were smashed, the Sacramento Bee reported.
He saw a man in a hoodie and called police — who would eventually shoot Clark 20 times, killing the 22-year-old father of two.
“It makes me never want to call 911 again,” said Reiling, who lives across the street from where Clark died. “They shot an innocent person.”
Clark, who was unarmed at the time, was shot seven times from behind and took up to 10 minutes to die, according to an autopsy performed by a pathologist hired by his family.
The two police officers who killed him said they opened fire because they believed he had a gun and was coming toward them. The cops then waited five minutes to handcuff and render aid to Clark, who was found in his grandmother’s back yard.
Reiling said he chased the man he encountered near his cars — but couldn’t make out his facial features.
“He was standing on the driver’s-side door looking over the truck at me,” Reiling said. “I got my ball bat and started chasing him down the street.”
The man fled to a neighbor’s back yard and Reiling told the 911 dispatcher that “the dogs are going crazy” where he thought the man had gone.
Reiling was on the street when police arrived, a helicopter also flying overhead. The helicopter told him to go indoors — and he did.
That’s when he heard the gunshots.
“They shot somebody back there, Stephon, for a cellphone,” Reiling told the Sacramento Bee.
On body camera footage, one of the cops can be heard yelling at Clark, “Show me your hands! Gun, gun, gun!” before he and the other cop squeeze off multiple shots in rapid succession.
A weapon was never found, but there was a cellphone near his body.
In the days after the shooting, Sacramento Police Chief Daniel Hahn said he believed Clark was responsible for shattering car windows in the area where he was shot — but added that he could not “say factually it was him yet.”
The fatal shooting is under investigation by District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert, as well as state Attorney General Xavier Becerra, whose office is providing independent oversight.