Last Friday a surveillance video was released which showed a suspected shoplifting that led to two stepbrothers being shot. A police officer said that they assaulted him with skateboards.
According to the police, the video which was taken Thursday morning inside a Safeway store, clearly showed Bryson Chaplin, 21, and Andre Thompson, 24, running from an employee before one of them tosses a beer case at her.
The employee, who confronted the two men and had a case of beer thrown at her called 911 right after they ran out the door, saying that her hand was hit when the case was thrown.
Ryan Donald, Olympia Officer who was amongst the several responds to the 1 a.m. call, reported spotting the two suspects soon after the incident.
In Donald’s following calls to dispatch, the 35-year-old accuses the pair of making a run for it and that one of the two men “assaulted me with his skateboard.”
“I tried to grab his friend,” Donald said. “They’re very aggressive, just so you know.”
In another call he reports having both men at gunpoint and asks for backup. After some kind of scuffle, seconds later he shouts, “Shots fired! One down.”
According to Donald’s reports the second man has also been shot.
Last Friday hospital officials reported Chaplin was in intensive care, but had a radical improvement in his condition and was upgraded from critical to serious. Thompson was reported to be in stable condition.
Both of them are expected to survive.
Even though the stepbrothers are black, and the officer is white, Police Chief Ronnie Roberts said, “There’s no indication to me that race was a factor in this case at all.”
The police chief further added that even though Donald was not injured, an officer “has the right to defend himself” if a suspect wields a deadly weapon which could be life threatening.
The police chief also said that there is no known video of the confrontation between Donald and the two men due to the fact that Olympia police officers do not wear body cameras and their cars are not outfitted with dashboard cameras.
Team of detectives from several agencies are investigating Thursday’s shooting.
