A video of a police shooting in the United States has surfaced on social media with a false communal claim that it shows a radical Islamist named Mohammad Altamish being shot by U.S. police for threatening them with a knife and refusing to surrender.
BOOM found that the video shows an incident from November 2022, when Jesus Crosby, a person with prior criminal records, was shot by the Albuquerque Police Department (APD) after being ordered to drop what appeared to be a knife.
The footage is disturbing in nature. Readers' discretion advised.
Right-wing handle on X, @RealBababanaras, posted the video with a false caption. BOOM has earlier fact checked the handle for peddling misinformation.
Click here to view the post and here for an archive.
Fact Check
BOOM broke the video into keyframes and ran a reverse image search on them. It led us to a news bulletin published by KRQE News 13 from March 24, 2023, carrying same visuals from 1 minute 52 seconds time stamp onwards.
The bulletin reported the incident as part of officer-involved shootings by the Albuquerque Police Department in United States' New Mexico in 2022. According to the date stamp, the shooting happened on November 10, 2022.
A report published by Albuquerque-based news outlet KOB 4 on December 25, 2022, identified the victim as 41-year-old Jesus Crosby. The article stated, citing the APD, that Crosby was reportedly trespassing at the APD headquarters and was armed with what officers thought was a knife.
According to the press release from the APD, a police officer spotted Crosby standing in front of a transport center and recognised him from previous criminal trespass arrests. When an officer attempted to detain him, Crosby lunged at the officer with a white and blue plastic object in his left hand and what appeared to be a knife in his right hand. Despite repeated commands from officers to drop the knife, Crosby refused and made two additional lunges toward them, raising the knife slightly in his right hand and pulling it back behind him. Officers then simultaneously discharged their firearms and tasers, resulting in fatal injuries to Crosby.
The press release further added that when officers removed the weapon from Crosby, they discovered it was nail clippers with the pointed file extended.
On April 4, 2023, KRQE News 13 reported that Crosby's family filed a lawsuit against the Albuquerque Police, claiming he was experiencing a mental health crisis and alleging that APD officers either lacked proper training or opted not to use a less-lethal option when confronting him.
