MARION, Ark. — Prosecuting attorney for Arkansas’s second judicial district Scott Ellington released a letter Wednesday that showed he would not pursue charges against the deadly shooting of 16-year-old Aries Clark outside a Marion youth home August 1.
His office also released body camera footage that showed the tense 10 minutes leading up to the teen’s death.
In the newly released videos, you can hear officers making calls for Clark to put his gun down.
“Come on, just drop it man,” Officer Wesley Smith said.
They don’t seem to know he has a BB gun, but his West Memphis neighbor said he would play around with it often.
“Everyone knew it was fake except the police,” Jacques Shelley said.
Family attorney Kim Cole, based in Dallas, said police didn’t do enough to de-escalate the situation.
“Even under those circumstances, certainly there are less lethal methods. Nobody deployed a TASER,” Cole said.
Cole said the family didn’t hear from any authorities before the release of the videos. She said Clark’s relatives were in “disbelief.”
“The more we try to dig into it, the more we’re being pushed to the side,” said Vickie Clark, Aries Clark’s mother. She spoke to WREG at her home two days after the incident.
On Wednesday, her lawyer said Aries Clark was a victim of a vicious system.
“Officers manage to take armed suspects into custody all the time. However, quite often black offenders are not given that courtesy,” Cole said.
“My partner I work with tried to talk to him and say, ‘You need to stop doing that ’cause one of the police officers is going to shoot you for real. ‘Cause they already feel threatened anyway from the race, the color,” Shelley said. “I just hope his family be okay.”
Cole said they are conducting an independent investigation in to what happened and could file a lawsuit against Marion at a later date.