WATCH: Fort Worth police release videos after officers fatally shot two men
A bullet that went through the glass of a car parked on Wiman Drive in east Fort Worth was fired from its passenger side, suggesting that the round may have come from the Glock 17 that a man held just before he was shot to death by two police officers, the chief of the city’s police department said on Friday.
Video images from the officers’ body-worn cameras show them running in the street early on May 16 as Emmitt Elijah Mayo moves along a sidewalk in the opposite direction. The officers and Mayo eventually align and become nearly parallel. When the officers fire, the position of Mayo’s gun is difficult to see in the video recordings. Mayo is seen turning his body toward the officers and police have said he pointed the gun, while his father disputes that.
The officers were on the street because people in the area reported hearing gunfire, with 14 calls to 911. When officers arrived, they heard more shots and ran toward the sound, Chief Eddie Garcia said on Friday. The officers fired upon Mayo as they encountered him going in their direction and saw “the way he started to manipulate that weapon,” Garcia said.
Mayo’s gun was illegally modified with a switch making it capable of automatic fire, Garcia said. When an officer collected it, the gun had a bullet in the chamber, and there were 16 rounds in its extended magazine. Mayo was, at the time of his death, documented by the police department as a street gang member.
“I can’t sit here and tell you that that round that came through the passenger rear window belonged to the gun he was holding, yet. I can’t,” Garcia said at a press conference. “There was a bullet that came in through that side of the street. Whether that came from him or someone else, it’s too early to tell on that.”
Garcia said police found in the area at least 30 casings ejected from guns before officers arrived.
In an interview with a reporter on Friday after the video recordings were released, Mayo’s father said he believes that his son did not know the people he was moving toward were police officers and that the officers did not give him a chance to respond to their commands to drop the gun.
“They killed the man in cold blood,” Mayo’s father said.
A detective spoke with Mayo’s father, also named Emmitt Mayo, after the shooting, but the police department did not show the family the body-worn camera video recordings before the press conference, Mayo’s father said.
“The facts are he did not point a gun,” the father said.
“They’re a bunch of liars,” Mayo’s father said of the police.
Garcia said he does not blame Mayo’s father for his perception, but “there’s been quite a bit of false narrative that has been put out since the shooting.” He said officers had to make a split-second decision to protect themselves and other people in the neighborhood.
“This is tragic, and ... my heart goes out to that father,” the chief said.
Emmitt Elijah Mayo was one of three people who were shot by a civilian in a previous incident in July 2024 at Castleman Street and Wiman Drive, police have said. A woman died, and two other people, including Mayo, who were shot survived.
In the May 16 case, Mayo’s father has said that his son, a 25-year-old rap artist known as 88Dub, pulled his gun to defend himself when shots were fired during a dispute over payment for his planned performance at a house party.
Garcia said the responding officers did not know exactly what occurred before they arrived at the scene.
At the news conference, police also released body-worn camera video from a second case on May 16 in which officers shot to death a civilian.
About four hours after the Wiman Drive shooting, officers were at the scene when a driver in an SUV sped past them four times and appeared to be trying to hit the officers and their vehicles, Chief Garcia said. After officers chased the SUV and stopped it on East Loop 820, the driver, while seated in the vehicle, grabbed an officer’s gun and was shot by five officers, Garcia said.
The Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office identified the driver as 29-year-old Jorge Contreras.
Contreras had a history of suffering from a mental illness, Garcia said. He said the investigation is ongoing, but at this point police do not have information suggesting that Mayo and Contreras knew each other.
An sergeant who was injured by shrapnel during the Loop 820 shooting was treated at a hospital and released.
Emmitt Elijah Mayo and Contreras were the second and third people whom Fort Worth Police Department officers shot to death in 2026. Officers shot two other people who survived. In the other fatal shooting, in March, a man charged at an officer while holding a broken bottle, Garcia said.
The seven officers who fired their weapons in the May 16 shootings were placed on critical incident leave, which is the department’s standard protocol.
This story was originally published May 22, 2026 at 11:37 AM.
