By Missy Wilkinson
The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate
NEW ORLEANS — New Orleans police on Thursday released footage of a special ops officer shooting a man as he allegedly held a woman hostage at gunpoint in a barricaded gas station on Halloween.
Emmanuel Harris, 54, remains hospitalized and is paralyzed from the waist down after a string of violent, erratic incidents captured on body-worn cameras and the store’s surveillance video.
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Though police say Harris never fired his weapon, they believe he did brandish it at a motorist while pulling on their vehicle’s handle in an attempted carjacking. Shortly thereafter, at around 8:30 p.m., he wielded it as he entered the gas station and convenience store at the intersection of North Galvez and Canal Street.
Video shows Harris hunkering behind the store’s counter, throwing items and occasionally pointing his gun in a side grip as two other employees, one of them also armed, extricate themselves from that area. He appears to barricade himself behind a shelving unit and a stool, crouching and pointing his gun from behind the makeshift bunker before jumping over the counter and allegedly taking aim at a female employee hiding near the freezers.
That’s when senior police officer Aaron Muse, a six-year veteran assigned to the special ops division, fired a single shot at Harris, striking him in the shoulder.
Muse was reassigned after the shooting and has since been returned to full duty.
The use of force remains under investigation by the Public Integrity Bureau’s Force Investigation Team. The Independent Police Monitor and federal consent decree monitors have also been notified, the NOPD said.
The NOPD furnished the footage to the media in accordance with its policy on critical use-of-force incidents, an area revamped under the consent decree. That practice will remain in place when NOPD exits federal oversight, said deputy superintendent Keith Sanchez.
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