Police shot the man, 26-year-old Justin Robinson of Southeast, after he was found unresponsive in his car and reached for an officer’s gun, according to police. Officers initiated contact with Robinson early Sunday after his car crashed into the restaurant in the 2500 block of Marion Barry Avenue SE, authorities said.
D.C. law requires the police department to release body-camera footage within five business days of a fatal police shooting, unless the victim’s next of kin objects. In this case, officials said, Robinson’s next of kin exercised their legal right to decline the public release of the video.
“The next of kin of the subject of the serious use of force declined release of body-worn camera footage of this incident,” Lindsey Appiah, the D.C. deputy mayor for public safety and justice, wrote in a letter to council member Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2), chair of the panel’s public safety committee.
In her letter, Appiah identified the officers involved in the shooting as Vasco Mateus and Bryan Gilchrist. Both are assigned to the 7th District police station and have been placed on administrative leave as detectives from the internal affairs bureau investigate the shooting, in keeping with department policy, police said. Mateus has been a D.C. police officer since August 2020 and Gilchrist has been an officer since January 2022, according to public salary records. Neither officer immediately responded to a request for comment.
Family members for Robinson, who worked as a violence interrupter with the D.C. Office of the Attorney General’s Cure the Streets program, could not immediately be reached Wednesday. Robinson was employed by the National Association for the Advancement of Returning Citizens, which advocates for formerly incarcerated people and runs violence intervention teams in D.C. neighborhoods.
According to police, officers approached Robinson’s vehicle shortly after 5:30 a.m. Sunday and found him in the driver’s seat with a firearm on his lap.
Robinson then “began moving inside the vehicle,” D.C. Police Chief Pamela A. Smith said at a news conference later Sunday. Smith said the officers ordered Robinson to surrender the gun. Police said that at one point, Robinson picked up the weapon. Smith told reporters Robinson “grabbed” an officer’s gun through his open car window. Then, Smith said, two other officers fired their weapons at Robinson, who was pronounced dead at the scene.
On Monday night, demonstrators blocked streets outside of the 7th District station, questioning the police department’s account and demanding to see body-camera video. Chants of “I’m sleep, don’t shoot” can be heard in a video of the protest posted on social media by council member Trayon White Sr. (D-Ward 8).
“Justin should still be here,” said Nee Nee Taylor, an activist with Harriet’s Wildest Dreams, a local Black-led mutual aid and community defense group that organizes against police violence.
Taylor said that she is in touch with Robinson’s family and that the decision not to release the footage at this time hinged in part on concerns over whether it would be released in full, unedited. She said the family was not ready to speak publicly about the circumstances of Robinson’s death.
In past cases, D.C. police have released two versions of body-camera footage from involved officers — one that is edited and shortened, and another full-length video that captures events starting when the involved officer activates the camera. In these publicly available records, identifying information such as faces and license plates sometimes are blurred.
A spokesperson for D.C. police declined to say whether the department would object to releasing the full, unedited footage of Robinson’s shooting. Asked about the issue, Susana Castillo, a spokesperson for Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D), reiterated that Robinson’s next of kin had objected to the video’s release.
Robinson is the second person to be fatally shot by a D.C. police officer this year, according to a database of fatal police shootings maintained by The Washington Post. Prosecutors announced in July that they would not seek charges against the officer who fatally shot Clifford Brooks, 41, in January.
