Attorneys for the family of a man shot and killed by police in Concord, North Carolina, are asking the Department of Justice to investigate the February shooting. The district attorney at the time said she would not prosecute the officer.

The body camera video from Feb. 13 shows Concord police officer Timothy Larson ordering a man to get out of a pickup truck. The officer said he found 29-year-old Brandon Combs, of Gastonia, trying to steal a pickup from the Nissan dealership.

What You Need To Know

  • Concord Police Officer Timothy Larson shot and killed Brandon Combs on Feb. 13. Now, Combs' family wants a federal investigation

  • Police said Combs was trying to steal a truck from a car dealership when he was killed. Combs ran from the truck and got into the driver's seat of a police SUV before he was shot

  • Larson told other officers that he shot Combs because he didn't want Combs to steal his police SUV, according to a federal lawsuit

  • The Cabarrus County District Attorney at the time said she would not prosecute the officer

 

After the officer backs up, Combs gets out of the pickup, runs to the police officer’s SUV and gets in the driver’s seat.

Larson fired into the windshield of the police SUV five times, the video shows, and then called in the shooting. Then he fired another round. When it was all over, Combs was dead.

The Concord Police Department fired Larson in May for lying to investigators about staffing and what he was doing that night before the shooting. The Cabarrus County district attorney at the time, Roxann Vaneekhoven, said she would not charge Larson in the killing.

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Vaneekhoven said she would not prosecute the police officer because there was a rifle in the police SUV with Combs and the vehicle was a threat. But lawyers for the family dispute that.

“District Attorney Vaneekhoven wants us to believe that officer Larson was responding to a threat on his life. But the video shows a different story entirely,” attorney Harry Daniels said in a statement Monday.

“It shows that officer Larson was standing outside the vehicle’s path where the vehicle posed no threat. It shows Larson firing the first shot before the engine revved and, after firing five shots and pausing to call in to dispatch, it shows him shooting Brandon again just to make sure he was dead,” he said.

Daniels, representing Combs’ mother Virginia Taraya, sued over the shooting last month.

The federal lawsuit states the officer did not try to give first aid to Combs after the shooting and that Combs was still alive when other police officers removed him from the SUV. Combs died an hour later at Atrium Hospital in Cabarrus County.

The lawsuit accuses Lawson of using excessive force and the city of wrongful death.

Related story: Family of man killed by Concord officer releases statement: 'Uncovered systematic failures'

Spectrum News 1 reached out to the City of Concord and the Cabarrus County District Attorney’s Office for comment but has not received a response.