Dashcam Video Shows ‘Senseless’ Killing Of Iranian-American By Federal Cops, Lawyers Say

WASHINGTON ― U.S. Park Police shot and killed an unarmed American man of Iranian descent in Fairfax County, Virginia, last November. In the months since the incident, the federal government hasn’t offered any explanation as to what led unnamed federal law enforcement officers to shoot and kill 25-year-old Bijan Ghaisar. But local authorities on Wednesday released a disturbing dashcam video that sheds new light on the shooting and could put pressure on the federal government to bring charges against the agents involved.

The dashcam video shows the fatal encounter that was a culmination of a police chase of Ghaisar’s Jeep. An unidentified federal officer hops out of the passenger seat of his police vehicle and points his gun at Ghaisar’s stopped vehicle. As the officer stands near the driver’s side of the Jeep pointing his weapon, the car slowly moves forward. The officer fires once. He fires four more times. His partner comes up behind him. More shots are fired, and the vehicle abruptly stops. 

Officers with the U.S. Park Police shot Ghaisar in the head four times on Nov. 17. Ghaisar, who by all accounts was unarmed and alone on George Washington Memorial Parkway, died 10 days later due to brain damage. Since then, the Ghaisar family has been seeking answers from the federal government about what happened to the football-loving young man from suburban Virginia who worked at his dad’s accounting firm and was looking forward to becoming an uncle.

“Not only did we lose Bijan, on top of it [all] but ... we have no information,” Ghaisar’s mother, Kelly, told HuffPost. “The total silence of this case makes us, our whole family, feel even worse, because we have to deal with Bijan’s loss and the way that he was taken.”

In shootings involving federal officers, like the U.S. Park Police which are under the U.S. Interior Department’s National Park Service, there’s often little information available upfront, while shootings involving local officers typically provide more.