The white sedan was heading down a service road adjacent to the Courtyard by Marriot on the edge of downtown Minneapolis when the National Guardsman started shooting.
It was about 9:40 p.m. on May 31, 2020, more than an hour after curfew went into effect and six days into the protests and riots that followed George Floyd's killing. A semitrailer truck had barreled onto the nearby Interstate 35W Bridge a few hours earlier, miraculously missing the hundreds of protesters clustered there. The National Guard and other law enforcement stationed in the parking lot had escalated to higher-alert status after reports of gunshots in the area.
Footage of the encounter shows law enforcement first firing less-lethal bullets at the vehicle in apparent attempts to turn the driver around. Then come the shriller cracks of live M4 rifle rounds.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa – shots fired, shots fired!" shouts an Anoka County deputy on the scene, according to body-camera video of the encounter.
"They told me to shoot! They said shoot!" a National Guardsman frantically replied.
"Who told you to shoot?" he is asked.
"You did, at that car!" the Guardsman responded before someone replies: "It's less lethal, dude."
More than three years after the chaotic event, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension has released a trove of body-camera videos and investigative reports documenting the shooting, first reported by KSTP after what the TV station called "a year long fight for data in the case."