Body-Camera Video Shows Chaos Around Fatal Police Shooting of N.J. Woman

Newly released police body-camera footage shows the chaotic scene when a police officer in Fort Lee, N.J., fatally shot a 25-year-old woman in her apartment last month after he responded to a call about a person experiencing a mental health crisis and holding a knife.

The family of the woman, Victoria G. Lee, had previously condemned the shooting, saying officers had escalated a nonthreatening episode to the point that it turned lethal.

The footage, released Friday by New Jersey’s attorney general, Matthew J. Platkin, shows the officer who fired the fatal shot, Tony Pickens Jr., and other officers standing outside Ms. Lee’s apartment door at a complex on Main Street just before 1:30 a.m. on July 28. The officers repeatedly asked, and then ordered, her to open the locked door.

“I’m going to break the door down,” Officer Pickens says at one point to Ms. Lee, whose mother is with her inside the apartment.

“Go ahead,” Ms. Lee responds, adding with a vulgarity, “I’m going to stab you” in the neck.

She continues, “Shoot me if you want to.”

“We don’t want to shoot you,” another officer says. “We want to talk to you.”

But about 45 seconds later, Officer Pickens forces the door open and, within seconds, fires a single shot at Ms. Lee, who is striding forward as officers yell at her to “drop the knife.” She is holding a large plastic jug of water in one hand and a small, unidentifiable object in the other, the footage shows. She then falls to the ground as her mother screams. She was declared dead at a hospital about 30 minutes later, according to a news release from the attorney general’s office.