It took nearly two years, and a federal lawsuit, for Wendy Tippitt to see the police video that captured the fatal shooting of her 29-year-old son.

In the following days and weeks, Randall’s mother searched for answers in vain, calling the Texas Rangers and the Rusk County district attorney’s office. She had no idea how her son wound up dead after a police traffic stop. “No one was telling us anything,” said Tippitt, who was born and raised in Rusk County and now cleans houses for a living.

Her first shock came two months after the shooting when a grand jury returned a no bill in the case, meaning it chose not to indict Iversen for killing an unarmed man.

The second came last summer when Iversen’s lawyers turned over the dashcam video after she filed a federal lawsuit. Nearly two years after the shooting, she finally got to see, in brutal detail, what happened in the moments before her youngest son was killed.

“The only person that was attacking anybody was Sgt. Iversen attacking my son,” Tippitt said.

Iversen quietly retired after the shooting and fought in court to keep the video from being made public. Its release sparked a backlash in rural Rusk County. It also set Randall’s mother on a crusade to get justice for his killing.

But whether that will happen — and what it would even look like — remains to be seen.

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  • IamSparticles@lemmy.zipEnglish
    621·
    13 hours ago

    An early portion indicates that, at the time Randall allegedly ran the flashing stop sign, Iversen was likely too far away from the intersection to see it. Iversen acknowledged as much in his interview with the Texas Rangers, saying he couldn’t see the full intersection but knew it well enough to deduce that Randall’s vehicle hadn’t come to a stop.

    So not only did he shoot an unarmed man who posed no threat whatsoever, but it wasn’t even a legal traffic stop in the first place. No wonder he didn’t want the footage released.