Video shows St. Louis officer fatally shot fleeing teen in head

The body-camera video released Monday laid out a scene far different from the first police account: a St. Louis officer shot Emeshyon Wilkins in the back of the head as the teenager ran away.

Wilkins was killed in June 2024, just two weeks after his 17th birthday. His family’s attorney, Al Watkins, said Wilkins was Black, had no prior criminal history and was pursued after police tried to stop an SUV reported stolen. Watkins said the vehicle was moving at about 10 mph during the chase.

The video, obtained by Watkins through discovery in a federal lawsuit after records-request efforts failed, shows two officers chasing Wilkins on foot, one carrying a taser and the other a firearm. In the footage, the armed officer orders Wilkins to the ground and to drop a gun before opening fire. Four shots were fired, and one bullet struck Wilkins in the back of the head.

Watkins has said the release was necessary to force accountability after the department resisted turning over the footage. “They fought that video issue for over a year,” he said. The lawsuit says a firearm found in Wilkins’ pocket was disassembled, in multiple pieces and incapable of being fired. The video does not show Wilkins holding or pointing a gun at officers.

The footage also undercut the department’s first public explanation. After the video was released, police acknowledged that information from a third party in the immediate aftermath of the shooting did not match the actual events and did not match what had initially been shared with the public. The department said it now sends a body-worn camera unit member to scenes so commanders can review footage before detailed public statements are issued.

That change reflects the institutional fallout that follows cases like this one. In St. Louis and nearby Ferguson, Missouri, the killing is already being viewed through the long shadow of Michael Brown, the 18-year-old shot by police in 2014 in Ferguson, an event that triggered months of protests and helped fuel the Black Lives Matter movement.

For Wilkins’ family, the central issue is no longer only what happened on the street in June 2024. It is how long the public had to wait for video that contradicted the police narrative, and what accountability looks like when an official account collapses under the images from a body camera.