Body cam footage shows Georgia officer fatally shooting exonerated man during traffic stop

Body-worn and dashboard camera footage released by a Georgia sheriff’s office Wednesday shows what led up to the moment a deputy fatally shot a black man who served more than 16 years in prison on a wrongful conviction.

The videos, published by the Camden County Sheriff’s Office, captured the deadly encounter between an unnamed deputy and 53-year-old Leonard Cure during a traffic stop Monday.

The officer had pulled over Cure, who was freed from prison about three-and-a-half years ago, for speeding on Interstate 95 — alleging he passed him “doing 100 miles an hour,” according to the clips.

The video shows Cure pull his pickup truck over to the side of the highway followed by the deputy shouting at him to demand he step out of the vehicle.

“Get out! Put your hands back here,” he instructs Cure, pointing to the back of the pickup truck.

“I didn’t do shit,” Cure replies as he flings his arm back when the officer tries to grab it.

The deputy takes out his Taser and points it at him as he instructs Cure to step to the back of the vehicle.

Cure questions who the deputy is and with what law enforcement agency he works for.

He then raises his hands in the air while walking to the back of the truck and follows the deputy’s orders to place his hands on its rear and turn around.

“Put your hands behind your back,” the deputy then orders Cure after calling for backup.

Confused, Cure asks if there’s a warrant out for his arrest and leaves his hands on the truck.

“Either put your hands behind your back ’cause you’re getting tased, I’m telling you that right now,” the officer tells Cure.

“Why? Why am I getting tased?” Cure asks.

“‘Cause you are under arrest for speeding and reckless driving,” the deputy said.

“I’m not driving. Nobody was hurt. How was I speeding?”

“You passed me doing 100 miles an hour,” the deputy said.

“OK, so that’s a speeding ticket, right?” Cure asks.

“Sir, tickets in the state of Georgia are criminal offenses,” the officer replies.

Cure, incredulously, says he’s not going to jail and refuses to comply.

“Hands behind your back. Yes, you’re going to jail,” the deputy says and then tazes Cure in the back after Cure points up at the sky.

The deputy again yells at Cure to put his hands behind his back, but instead, Cure flares his arms at the tazer strings and comes toward the deputy.

The pair then tussle chest-to-chest, the dash cam video shows. Cure grabs the officer’s face and pushes his head back, cursing at him, while the officer takes out his baton and whacks him, according to the footage.

The deputy then shoots Cure with his gun at close range and the man releases his face as he falls to the ground, the clip shows.

“Stay down,” he yells at Cure as he flails around, according to the video.

The out-of-breath deputy speaks into his radio and reports that shots were fired and the suspect was down while asking for help.

He and other officers who come to the scene render aid until paramedics arrive and move Cure into an ambulance, according to the video that later shows the deputy getting emotional and crying.

Cure later died.

His family — who were shown the videos before they were made public — said a traffic stop should have never ended in Cure’s death.

His brother Wallace Cure told reporters there was “absolutely no reason why my brother was murdered for a traffic stop.” While he acknowledged the physical fight captured in the videos, he said he had seen other confrontations between cops and suspects where “the person did not end up dead.”

The family’s lawyer Benjamin Crump said the deputy came off as aggressive from the beginning and made no attempt to de-escalate the situation.

Crump and another brother, Michael Cure, believe the officer triggered Cure when he told him he was going to jail.

“I believe there were possibly some issues going on, some mental issues with my brother,” Michael Cure said. “I know him quite well. The officer just triggered him, undoubtedly triggered him. It was excitement met with excitement.”

Crump said Cure’s post-traumatic stress disorder was triggered.

“When you’ve been wrongfully convicted, and then they’re talking about taking you back to the cage?” he said at a press conference with the brothers. “It’s psychological at that point.”

Cure was exonerated and released in 2020 through the work of the Innocence Project of Florida.

He was serving a life sentence after he was convicted in 2003 of an armed robbery of a Walgreens in Broward County, FL.

But a Broward State Attorney’s Office Conviction Review Unit was formed in 2019 and took up his case. The unit found that Cure had a solid alibi — in the form of a time-stamped ATM receipt miles away — at the time of the robbery, which was previously ignored, and there was no physical evidence to tie him to the scene.

An independent review panel of lawyers and later a judge all agreed that Cure was innocent and the charges were dropped.

“I’m looking forward to putting this situation behind me and moving on with my life,” Cure told the South Florida Sun Sentinel at the time.

The freed man had recently purchased a house in Palmetto, Ga. with some of the $817,000 he received from the state of Florida this summer for his wrongful conviction and incarceration.

The Innocence Project of Florida’s executive director, Seth Miller, mourned the death of Cure aka Lenny.

“I can only imagine what it’s like to know your son is innocent and watch him be sentenced to life in prison, to be exonerated and … then be told that once he’s been freed, he’s been shot dead,” Miller said.