Questions abound in fatal police shooting of unarmed Texas teen

FBI invited to assist in probe after cop kills college student Christian Taylor http://t.co/vnxgF4a7gI pic.twitter.com/PHYIANAjhE

— NBC Nightly News (@NBCNightlyNews) August 9, 2015

The death of Christian Taylor, an unarmed black 19-year-old shot to death by a Texas police officer in the small hours of Friday morning, has raised questions about the circumstances of the shooting, which some see as fitting a pattern of police officers’ use of deadly force against young black men.

According to a police press release, two officers in the Dallas suburb of Arlington responded around 1 a.m. to a suspected burglary at a local car dealership. Upon arriving at the scene, the pair confronted Taylor, who police say had driven his car through the side of the dealership, resulting in an altercation in which one of the officers shot Taylor four times. Taylor died at the scene.

Taylor was a student at Angelo State University in San Angelo, Texas, where he was a defensive back for the school’s football team.

At a news conference Saturday night, Arlington Police Chief Will Johnson promised “a transparent, thorough and fair investigation,” but cautioned that the process might be “lengthy and at times frustratingly slow,” The New York Times reported. Johnson also said he reached out to the Federal Bureau of Investigation to enlist the agency’s help in investigating Taylor’s death.

As of Saturday, the officers involved had not yet been interviewed about the shooting, according to The Times. Johnson said such a delay was normal procedure, and said the department would release the 911 call and police radio traffic from the incident once the officers had submitted their statements.

Surveillance video from Classic Buick GMC, published by a Dallas NBC television affiliate, shows Taylor wandering around the dealership’s empty parking lot and jumping repeatedly on the front of a parked car before breaking a section of its windshield and entering the vehicle.

Later, the video shows Taylor using his car to break through the dealership’s gate before driving through the glass wall of the dealership. The footage also shows police arriving at the scene and an ambulance and fire truck showing up, but it does not show the confrontation between Taylor and the officers. Officials said the officers were not wearing body cameras.

The video has been edited, so the chronology of the events it shows is not certain.

Taylor’s brother Joshua, 23, said his family is looking for answers about what happened during the altercation in which Taylor was shot. “Until we get concrete facts, we won’t know what happened,” he told Reuters.

Officer Brad Miller, who shot Taylor, is seen in a handout photo provided by the Arlington Police Department. Photo by Reuters/Arlington Police Department

The police department identified the officer who shot Taylor as 49-year-old Brad Miller. Miller, who is white, is a trainee officer who has been working under the supervision of a training officer since graduating from the police academy in March.

Miller has been placed on administrative leave, an action the department said is routine in deadly force incidents.

Taylor’s death quickly became the subject of controversy on social media, and the hashtag #ChristianTaylor has been widely used on Twitter as users push for transparency and accountability in the case.