‘Stop, I will shoot you’: Body camera shows police shooting of Amaree’ya Henderson in KCK
A police officer planted his feet on a car doorframe after the driver started the engine and then shot the 25-year-old motorist in the face as the vehicle sped down a Kansas City, Kansas, block, according to body camera footage obtained by The Star on Friday.
The video shows the April 26, 2023, traffic stop and subsequent shooting of Amaree’ya Henderson, of Kansas City, Missouri, whose family has said he was delivering for DoorDash with his girlfriend Shakira Hill when an officer pulled them over for an unknown reason.
Police have said the officer fired his weapon to prevent being run over. The Wyandotte County District Attorney’s Office declined to pursue criminal charges in the case.
The bodycam video from Officer Austin Schuler, who shot Henderson, begins with a traffic stop near Metropolitan Avenue and the 12th Street Bridge. The license plate on the car was expired.
The officer walks up to the car as Henderson rolls down the rear driver’s side window. Schuler asks for the front window to be rolled down, and Henderson tells him it is broken.
After being handed his driver’s license and his cellphone that had proof of his insurance, Schuler asks Henderson and Hill to “give me just a second” and returns to the patrol vehicle.
Schuler runs the driver’s license as other officers arrive on the scene. He exits his patrol vehicle and returns to Henderson’s side about 10 minutes later, saying the car will be searched because of the smell of marijuana. It is illegal to possess or drive under the influence of marijuana in Kansas.
“All right, sir, are there any weapons or drugs in the car?” Schuler asks.
“No, why are you trying to get in my car?” Henderson replies.
“I’m going to go on and have you step on out. OK sir?” Schuler says as he opens the front driver’s side door.
“What are you trying to have me step out for?” Henderson says.
“Your car smells like burnt weed, so I’m gonna have you step out, OK?”
“This isn’t like a request,” Schuler adds. “I am gonna have you step out. We don’t have to make it difficult or anything like that, man.”
Another officer speaks to Hill on the passenger side, while Hill is on FaceTime with Henderson’s mother Pauletta Johnson, describing being scared of the situation and the police. The other officer says no one is going in handcuffs and asks them to get out so the car can be searched.
Henderson starts the engine as the driver’s door is still open.
“Hey, don’t do that. Don’t do that,” Schuler says. He jumps on the doorframe.
Henderson begins to drive away and pulls toward the left, with the officer still hanging on. He speeds up and travels about 100 yards, as shown in reports and the video footage.
“Stop, I will shoot you,” Schuler yells, drawing his firearm with his right hand and shooting Henderson within the span of a second.
Afterward, the car collides with a parked vehicle and the officer hits the ground. Hill, the passenger, gets out on the passenger side, sobbing and yelling.
Henderson appears dead after the encounter, as Schuler gets back on his feet. The car is still driving forward, its front airbags deployed, until another officer runs up and takes the transmission out of gear.
Henderson was taken by ambulance to KU Medical Center and declared dead there. Schuler was also treated at the hospital for injuries authorities have described as minor.
Police in July told The Star that Schuler remained employed with the department after local prosecutors and the federal Department of Justice conducted investigations.
Nancy Chartrand, a spokeswoman for the Kansas City, Kansas, Police Department declined to comment on Friday, citing a pending lawsuit. She also directed questions about the investigation across the state line to the Kansas City Police Department, the outside agency that reviewed the shooting before forwarding the case to prosecutors.
Johnson, Henderson’s mother, filed a lawsuit against the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas, over the summer. The case is pending in federal court.
In a statement Friday evening, attorney Nuru Witherspoon said the family “is relieved that the body cam footage is finally being released to the public so that they can see and hear what happened” to Henderson.
“It’s been 590 days since Amaree’ya was killed, and now the public will know what happened to him,” Witherspoon said.
Kay Harper Williams, also a partner attorney at Witherspoon Law Group, referenced the immediate “public outcry” for the footage, saying “citizens have a right to know what has taken place when there is an officer-involved shooting.”
“The community is asked to trust those who are sworn to protect and serve, but transparency and accountability are critical to building and maintaining that trust,” she said. “Officer-involved shootings should not be shrouded in secrecy.”
The Star obtained the body camera footage and the investigative file following a monthslong public records fight that landed in court. The footage may never have seen the light of day if not for an interstate agreement with Kansas City, Missouri.
In October, The Star sought records in Missouri for Henderson’s case as well as that of 50-year-old John Anderton, fatally shot in February 2023, which were investigations by KCPD that involved Kansas City, Kansas, officers. Lawyers for the Unified Government of Wyandotte County fought the disclosure in court.
A Platte County judge in November ordered the body camera video and other investigative materials to be released. Circuit Court Judge Myles Perry ruled the disclosures of KCPD’s files should follow Missouri’s public records law regardless of the agreement with Kansas City, Kansas.
Kansas employs a stricter open records law that allows police agencies far wider discretion with what to disclose. Only family members of a person killed by a law enforcement officer are entitled to view body camera footage in a controlled environment.
A Star investigation published in March found many agencies in Kansas frequently decline to share videos of police shootings with the public. In the five years from 2019 to 2023, police officers fatally shot 47 people in Kansas. Officers were cleared of criminal charges in all of those cases.
The Star requested videos from all of the shootings under the Kansas Open Records Act. Where recordings existed, officials declined to release them to the public 67% of the time.
Eight of those fatal police shootings were in Kansas City, Kansas. The department released one video in 2022. The department declined to release footage from the other seven fatal shootings, which included Henderson’s.
This story was originally published December 6, 2024 at 7:02 PM.
