The eyewitness who recorded the cellphone video that put a South Carolina police officer in jail on a murder charge just said that he is afraid for his life. Feidin Santana walks with security who is watching out for him right now – something he is fairly low key about – but in his first interview Wednesday, he said that even when he first told officers on the scene that he recorded the incident, he had the impression that he would be killed if he waited around.
“I’ve seen that movie before” he said last night in an interview with NBC News.
So when the officers told him to “wait right here” and they left to get other law enforcement officers, he took off and leaked the video through less formal channels.
Now, he says that he still believes his life is threatened by members of the police department. He walked the same route to work every day – that’s when he saw and recorded the incident which led to the fatal shooting of Walter Scott. But now that has all changed. He explained in interviews yesterday that now he varies his route to work and does not go that same way any longer, in order to avoid assassination.
Santana told NBC News that “I felt that my life, with this information, might be in danger.”
Once he left the scene after officers told him to stay put, he worried that perhaps he should just delete the footage – as releasing it would put him in police crosshairs.
But after hearing the lies the police department announced about the incident, he decided he could not – in good conscience – remain silent.
“What if there was no video? What if there was no witness, or ‘hero’ as I call him, to come forward?” the Scott family’s lawyer, L. Chris Stewart, said to The Associated Press. “We didn’t know he existed. He came out the blue.”
I really, really hope he has protection.