Video shows moments before fatal shooting of Walter Scott

Questions persist about the fatal shooting of a black South Carolina motorist after the release of video taken from the car of the white US police officer charged over the death.

The dashboard camera footage released by state police showed North Charleston officer Michael Thomas Slager pulling over Walter Scott for a broken brake light last weekend.

The video captures the moments leading up to a shooting that has sparked outrage as the latest example of a white police officer killing an unarmed black man.

The shooting itself was captured by a witness on his iPhone and provided the impetus for the officer to be charged with murder and fired.

* Warning readers may find this video distressing as it contains graphic footage.

That is a striking difference from the recent cases in Ferguson, Missouri, and New York City, where white officers were not charged over the deaths of African-Americans, prompting protests and intense debate about police treatment of minorities.

Saturday’s traffic stop opens routinely as Mr Scott is stopped in a used Mercedes-Benz he had bought days earlier, footage from the patrol car showed. The officer is seen walking towards the driver’s window, requesting Mr Scott’s licence and registration. Slager then returns to his vehicle.

The video also shows Mr Scott beginning to get out of the car, his right hand raised above his head. He then quickly gets back into the car and closes the door. After Slager goes back to his patrol car, minutes later, Mr Scott jumps from his car and runs. Slager chases him.

What is missing is what happens from the time the two men run out of the frame of dashboard video to the time picked up in a bystander’s mobile phone video. The phone footage starts with Mr Scott getting to his feet and running away, then Slager firing eight shots at the man’s back.

The dashboard camera is in stark contrast to the phone footage of the later moments of the encounter. On the dash cam video, Slager never touches his gun during the stop. He makes no unreasonable demands or threats.

“It is possible for something to happen in that gap to significantly raise the officer’s perception of risk,” Seth Stoughton, a former police officer and criminal law professor at the University of South Carolina.

Slager, 33, is being held in jail pending an August 21 hearing on a murder charge.

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