Adam Toledo shooting: what happened to 13-year-old shot by police - and what does the footage show?

New police body camera footage from Chicago appears to show an officer shooting Adam Toledo, a 13-year-old Latino boy.

Toledo was shot in the city on March 29 following a pursuit on foot by officers. The new footage shows Toledo putting his hands in the air prior to being shot.

What happened in the shooting?

Toledo was with Ruben Roman, 21, at the time of the shooting on 29 March. Roman has since been charged with a number of felonies in connection with the night of the shooting, including reckless discharge of a firearm and child endangerment.

Prior to the body cam footage being released, police had indicated that Toledo had been carrying a gun when he turned to face officers after disobeying commands to stop.

Information - including Toledo’s age - wasn’t released until days after the incident.

Elizabeth Toledo, Adam’s mother, believed her son was missing, as she was not informed of his death until two days after it happened.

The body cam footage released on Thursday, April 15, appears to contradict the account given by the authorities, with Toledo stopping after the officer shouts at him, turning and putting his hands in the air with no weapon visible in his hands.

Following this, he is shot in the chest by the officer from just a short distance away.

Who shot Toledo?

The officer who shot Toledo has now been named as Eric Stillman, 34, a white police officer who has been with the Chicago police department since 2015.

What’s happened since the footage was released?

In the aftermath of the body cam footage being released, widespread anger and sorrow has swept through Chicago, with calls for the city mayor, Lori Lightfoot, to resign from her post.

In a press conference held on Thursday, April 15, Lightfoot stood along Latino community leaders and called for calm, describing the video of Toledo as “incredibly difficult to watch, particularly at the end”, adding: “We failed Adam”.

“I want to ask again that everyone tuning in right now think first and foremost about Adam Toledo, about what his family is enduring every single day since they learned of his passing,” Lightfoot said.

While the mayor didn’t comment on original reports of Toledo holding a gun, the mayor did confirm there was “no evidence whatsoever that Adam Toledo shot at the police”.

US senator Ed Markey, representing Massachusetts, tweeted of the incident: “We need justice for Adam Toledo, killed at just 13 years old by police violence.”

In a statement, Toledo’s mother said Adam had “a big imagination and curiosity”, loved animals, riding his bicycle and had a fascination with zombies,

Have similar shootings taken place in Chicago?

Several misconduct scandals and shootings involving police have taken place in Chicago during Lightfoot’s tenure as mayor, in spite of increased police accountability forming a key part of her election campaign in 2019.

In March, Anthony Alvarez, 22, and Travon Chadwell, 18, were killed by police in Chicago, coinciding, too, with the ongoing George Floyd trial and the shooting of Daunte Wright in Minnesota last week.