City Will Pay $5M to Family of Man Shot 38 Times

UPDATE Jan 12, 2024 11:35 AM CST

The city of Vallejo, California, has reached a $5 million settlement with the family of rapper Willie McCoy, who was shot 38 times after officers found him asleep with a gun in his lap in a car at a Taco Bell in 2019. Prosecutors did not file charges against the six officers, who fired a total of 55 shots at the 20-year-old, the Guardian reports. Melissa Nold, a lawyer for the family, tells KRON4 that they will continue to seek federal civil rights charges against the officers. "Money does not equal justice when a person has been murdered," she says. "This is nowhere near over." The city said the settlement "does not imply an admission of liability or wrongdoing by the City of Vallejo or any City employee."

Mar 31, 2019 8:56 AM CDT

Police in California have released video that shows six officers opening fire on a 20-year-old man who'd been asleep in his car with a gun in his lap. Willie McCoy, 20, was killed in February in the drive-thru lane of a Taco Bell in Vallejo. The release includes a 30-minute video with the police department's account of the shooting, NBC reports, as well as raw footage from the officers' bodycams. It shows McCoy appearing to stir and apparently scratch his arm. The police video is slowed down at that point, and it appears to show McCoy reaching down, though the gun isn't visible. After a barrage of bullets, officers can be heard telling McCoy, "Show me your hands!" The video ends as an officer nears the car.

Family attorneys have said McCoy, a Bay Area rapper known as Willie Bo, was shot about 25 times. The video was shown earlier this month to the family, who wanted the city to release it. The six officers are back on active duty. McCoy's family says police executed him when he wasn't awake or alert, and the video shows officers did not try to wake him, the Guardian reports. They kept their guns pointed at his head for several minutes as he slept. When they realized the gun had no magazine in it, one officer can be heard saying, "He's only got one shot if he shoots."

story continues below

At this point in the video, police added a caption saying the gun actually was loaded with an extended 14-round magazine. One officer then said, "If he reaches for it, you know what to do." McCoy did not say anything to officers as he began to stir. A few seconds later, McCoy "was shot to pieces," a family lawyer said Friday. His cousin calls his death "a racist act." The family has notified the city that it plans to file a civil rights lawsuit, but Marc McCoy isn't hopeful that the video will bring justice. "There's a thousand videos on YouTube that show police misconduct, whether it's beatings of citizens or killing them," he told the Guardian. "It gets dismissed." (More police shooting stories.)