Bodycam footage leading up to Balch Springs slaying contradicts ex-officer’s account

Video taken from former Balch Springs police officer Roy Oliver’s body camera shows the moments leading up to Oliver’s fatal shooting of a 15-year-old boy last year and contradicts the ex-officer’s account.

Oliver is on trial in Dallas on a charge of murdering Jordan Edwards, an African-American freshman who played football at his high school in Mesquite, as he left a party on April 29, 2017.

The only other officer present when Oliver shot the boy, Officer Tyler Gross, testified Thursday before lunch.

Though Oliver’s defense before his arrest was that he feared for their lives because the car in which Edwards sat was moving backward toward them, body camera footage and witnesses told the opposite story.

The driver, Edwards’ brother, was trying to leave the area.

Asked by prosecutors if he ever feared for his life, Gross said no.

Video footage

The bodycam video shows both officers arriving at a house in the 12000 block of Baron Road just after 11 p.m. on April 29, 2017.

The homeowners were out of town and their son was hosting a party that attracted roughly 150 to 300 high schoolers, prosecutor Michael Snipes said. But at around 11 p.m., a neighbor upset about the traffic called police.

When Gross and Oliver arrived, the footage shows them walking into the house as handfuls of teenagers run outside to leave.

As Gross talks to the boy throwing the party, 12 gunshots can be heard outside, along with panicked screams.

The officers run outside.

Gross testified that he wanted to find a possible suspect, and help any potential victims.

Some teenagers who initially ran outside started to go back into the house. Others were taking cover outside of homes, Gross said.

It wasn’t until later that the officers discovered the gunfire was coming from a nearby nursing home — not the party.

But seconds after the gunshots were heard, Oliver ran to his car, grabbed his rifle and cocked it.

Gross stopped one car that tried to leave on Baron Road.

The other — in which Edwards sat with his brother and friend — was backing out of its spot on the same road.

Gross said he began to call in the car’s license plate number and then realized the driver was trying to leave.

“I then began telling them to stop the car,” he testified. “At that point, I walked up, the vehicle backed up and backed north on Shepherd. … I stepped onto Shepherd Road ahead of the vehicle. I continued toward the vehicle, then (it drove passed me.)”

Gross said he hit the car, which broke its window, and then immediately heard a series of gunshots.

Those shots came from Oliver’s rifle.

In the video, after he stops shooting, Oliver asks Gross if he’s OK. Gross says yes, and Oliver responds, “He was trying to hit you.”

“I was not in fear at that point,” Gross testified.

One of the defense attorneys asked Gross to act out how close he was to the car when he hit the window.

Using a tape measure, he determined that the officer was about 20 inches from the car, and he argued that Oliver’s point-of-view could have led him to believe that Gross was about to be run over.

The defense attorney also brought up a previous statement in which Gross said he was fearful.

“I was in fear, the vehicle was close to me,” the officer responded. “I didn’t think the vehicle was going to run me over.”

Oliver was fired from the Balch Springs department on May 2, 2017, for violating department policies. He joined the department in 2011 after being an officer with the Dalworthington Gardens Police Department for almost a year. Before that he was a dispatcher in Dalworthington Gardens.

A statement from Dalworthington Gardens at the time said Oliver received an award for “meritorious conduct” as a dispatcher and there were no documented complaints or disciplinary action in either his work as a public safety officer or dispatcher.

Watch the trial proceedings live at lawandcrime.com.

This story was originally published August 16, 2018 at 1:55 PM with the headline "Bodycam footage leading up to Balch Springs slaying contradicts ex-officer’s account."