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New Jersey law requires grand jury reviews of all fatal police shootings even when police bodycam video is clear -- as in this case -- and there's no mistaking the series of events (ditto).
This one was literally over in seconds.
Officer Steven Lazo and his partner had just responded to a 911 call of an unwanted person involved in a dispute on Amity Street shortly after 8 a.m. July 29, when the incident occurred.
They then followed the sound of a woman screaming in a rear room.
Two men were trying to restrain Estiben Alegria-Hurtado, a 42-year-old city resident, video from the incident shows.
Alegria-Hurtado breaks free and runs through a door to a stairwell with Lazo behind him.
The woman -- who apparently was the ex-girlfriend of Alegria-Hurtado's brother -- is perilously close to them.
Alegria-Hurtado grabs the woman by the hair, raises the knife above his shoulder and is shot in the chest.
"He tried to kill me. He tried to kill me," the woman tells Lazo and his partner as they tend to Algeria-Hurtado. "He tried to f***ing kill me."
An ambulance took Algeria-Hurtado to University Hospital in Newark, where he was pronounced dead the following night, New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin said.
Despite the circumstances, Platkin's office is required by state law to thoroughly investigate any and all civilian deaths that occur in encounters with police.
The guidelines guarantee that the investigation is done “in a full, impartial and transparent manner," removing politics or personal agendas.
Part of the process involved releasing all 911 audio, police bodycam footage and video shot from surveillance cameras and/or cellphones to the family of the deceased -- and then the public -- as an investigation by Platkin’s Office of Public Integrity and Accountability (OPIA) continued.
That was done in this case two weeks after the shooting.
Two videos and the audio 911 call can be found here: Elizabeth - Hurtado Recordings
Once the OPIA probe was completed, the results were presented to the grand jury.
This included police body cam video of the incident, home surveillance footage, witness interviews, photographs, ballistics results, and autopsy findings from the medical examiner, Platkin said.
After hearing the testimony and viewing the evidence, the grand jury on Monday, March 18, returned a “no bill,” concluding that it was a clean shoot.
Platkin noted that a law enforcement officer "may use deadly force in New Jersey when the officer reasonably believes it is immediately necessary to protect the officer or another person from imminent danger of death or serious bodily harm."
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