SAN ANTONIO — A former Texas police officer was charged after shooting an unarmed teenager who was sitting in his car eating a hamburger in a McDonald's parking lot last week.
San Antonio Police Chief William McManus announced that James Brennand, 25, was charged with two counts of aggravated assault by a peace officer for the Oct. 2 shooting of 17-year-old Erik Cantu, CNN and the Associated Press reported.
According to the Associated Press, Brennand turned himself in to the police on Tuesday.
In a statement on Tuesday, Cantu's family, via their family lawyer, said the teenager is still unconscious and on life support, the Associated Press reported.
In a video statement, police training commander Alyssa Campos said Brennand responded to an unrelated disturbance call at the fast-food restaurant when he spotted Cantu in a car he believed had evaded him the previous day and called for backup.
Before backup arrived, body camera video released by police shows Brennand opening the driver's side door and demanding Cantu get out, the news outlets reported.
According to the Associated Press, in the video, the car is seen driving in reverse with the car door open when the officer fired multiple times into the vehicle.
The news outlet reported that officers found Cantu nearby suffering from gunshot wounds.
A passenger, who was inside the vehicle with Cantu at the time of the shooting, was not injured, police said, the Associated Press reported.
In the video statement released on Oct. 5, Campos announced the department had fired Brennand.
In an interview with CNN on Tuesday, McManus said that the body-cam footage was “horrific."
"There's no question in anybody's mind looking at that video that the shooting is not justified," McManus told CNN. "And it took us a couple [of] days to terminate Brennand, but he was gone pretty quickly."
McManus told CNN that he expected murder charges to be filed if Cantu dies.