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Body cam footage released in Moraine officer-involved shooting

MORAINE — Video released Tuesday shows the moments leading up to an officer-involved shooting in Moraine last week.

The Moraine Police Department released the footage from the body cameras of three different officers involved in the incident after the May 4 accident on northbound I-75 near Dryden Road.

Video reviewed by News Center 7 shows officers on scene of the crash on I-75, holding a man, later identified as Elijah Isham, at gunpoint. The man was still inside a vehicle that was involved in a crash moments earlier.

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The crash was reported around 5:45 a.m. on May 4. 911 callers reported seeing one vehicle overturned on its top and another in a ditch.

The driver of the car in the ditch called police to report the crash.

“I was in the slow lane, coming up on the Dryden Road exit and someone hit me and I went down to the ditch, took a sign” the driver said in the 911 call. “I can see a car on its top in the middle of the highway.”

Moraine officers arrived on scene of the accident at 5:51 a.m.

At a press conference last week, Police Chief Craig Richardson said the officers checked on the man in the car on its top once, but when paramedics arrived, they went back to his car and he was pointing a gun at them. Police later said it was a .44 caliber handgun.

Richardson said the officers checked with troopers on scene to see if there was a less-lethal option available, but determined there was not on immediately available.

Officers spent five minutes trying to deescalate the situation, gave 41 commands to the man to drop the weapon and offered at least three times to get the man help. The man did not obey commands from the officers.

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Video released Tuesday showed officers talking with the Isham, ordering him multiple times to put his weapon down.

Richardson said the officers fired their service weapons after one officer heard the man appearing to pull the hammer back on the weapon. The two officers fired nine shots, striking the man at 6:07 a.m.

News Center 7 learned Tuesday that one of the officers involved attempted to pepper-spray Isham, but it did not make him drop the weapon or give up.

Richardson previously said the two officers involved were Sgt. Kenneth Llyod and Officer Jerome Klemmensen. Both officers are on paid administrative leave pending an investigation. Neither officer was injured during the incident. A third officer involved did not fire any shots.

After the shooting, an investigation revealed that the gun in Isham’s possession was not loaded.

The shooting is still under investigation by the Tactical Crime Suppression Unit Task Force.

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