A recently released dash cam video reveals that officers in Pinellas County, Florida stood by as three Black teens drowned in a stolen car last month.
The three teenage girls were 16-year-old Dominique Battle, 15-year-old Ashaunti Butler, and 15-year-old Laniya Miller.
After a car chase with officers, all three young women died on March 31 when the car went into a pond at a Florida cemetery.
According to reports by Tampa Bay Newspapers Weekly, the sheriff initially stated that officers on the scene dropped their gun belts and went into the pond in an effort to save the screaming teenage girls. “Deputies wading out into the water were just sinking [into the muck] and couldn’t get to the car,” Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said April 1.
In the video, officers did the exact opposite. Officers said in the video that they could hear the young women screaming and crying out for help. The deputies are just standing as the car fills with water and sinks further into the pond.
“They’re done. They are 6-7, dude,” an officer tells his partner. “But now, they’re done. They’re done.”
