A Los Angeles police officer shot Jermaine Petit multiple times in the back as he ran away from him despite realizing he didn’t have a weapon.

Body-worn camera footage of the incident released more than six weeks after the incident shows one of the officers ordering Petit to remove his hands from his pockets. He refuses, and his brisk walk turns into a jog.

The officer, whose gun is already drawn, acknowledges that Petit is not holding a weapon but still proceeds to open fire. Police officials said later that Petit was holding a small car part.

“It’s not a gun, Bro,” one of the officers says in the video. He starts to chase Petit, who picks up speed.

“Drop it,” the officer says before opening fire. Petit collapses in the middle of the street.

Police officials said they received multiple emergency calls about a man armed with a black semi-automatic handgun on Edge Hill Drive on July 18 around 7:20 p.m. Capt. Kelly Muniz said Petit matched the description.

“I got a guy, well, a dark-skinned guy with dreadlocks. He has a flannel shirt on,” said one caller, who described the suspect as a “transient.”

“I asked him to leave, and he pulled a gun on me,” he added. The caller first describes the weapon as a semi-automatic gun, then says it’s a pistol.

Another caller tells the 911 dispatcher she saw the man walking just north of Martin Luther King Boulevard.

In a video statement with the release of the body-worn camera on Sept. 1, Muniz says the officers thought Petit was carrying a firearm when they shot him near the north sidewalk of Martin Luther King Boulevard. She adds that the body-worn camera provides a limited view of what happened on the scene.

“As the officers followed Petit on foot, he turned toward them multiple times while pointing a black metallic object believed to be a firearm in their direction. Shortly thereafter, a patrol sergeant, also believing Petit was armed with a gun, arrived at the scene. He saw Petit continuing to walk away while refusing to comply with the officers’ verbal commands,” she said.

“As Petit continued to be noncompliant, he turned towards the sergeant and pointed the same black, metallic object at him resulting in an officer shooting.”

According to reports, LAPD Chief Michel Moore said the following day at a police commission meeting that the object was a “black metal latch actuator.”

Reports show Petit was taken to the hospital in critical condition. Police said he is expected to survive. His minor daughter, Ashlyn Petit, who lives in Minnesota, created an online fundraising account to cover a trip to Los Angeles. She said her father was shot three times in the back.

The LAPD has identified the officers involved in the shooting as Sgt. Brett Hayhoe and Officer Daryl Glover Jr. Glover’s mother is reportedly the union director of the police division where Glover works. The agency has not identified which officer shot Petit.

Petit, an Air Force veteran, is no stranger to the authorities, according to reports. In a 2019 interview, Petit’s mother, Charlotte Blackwell, told KABC that Petit served as an emergency response technician in the military and suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder. After returning home from Germany, Petit started exhibiting bizarre behavior.

“I used to have nightmares sometimes about dead people, dead babies, just the dead,” Petit told KABC.

Blackwell told reporters Petit had been arrested about two dozen times, but he seemed to turn a new leaf after L.A. County Sheriff’s Lt. James Powers helped him get treatment after his last arrest. Petit was two weeks away from going to a transitional home at the time.

Petit had been arrested and tased a few years earlier after Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies approached him for jaywalking, reports show. They thought he had a weapon. He ran into a liquor store before he was hit with the stun gun.

“I was high on crystal meth. I didn’t know what I was on,” Petit told KABC in February 2019. “When you’re high on crystal meth, you believe certain things, start believing in things that don’t exist.”

However, people in the neighborhood where Petit was shot in July who were familiar with the veteran said he was nonviolent and “minded his business.”

A witness from the neighborhood told Knock LA that he saw Petit with a confused look on his face while officers were following him “like, what do you guys want?”

The witness said he thought the police would use a Taser on Petit before they pulled out a gun.

“Y’all have options. Why shoot with guns?” said the neighborhood resident who was outside with his grandchildren when the shooting occurred.

Deshonay Howard told the Los Angeles Times she was parked in front of her house across the street when she saw officers following Petit.

“We all heard him say, ‘I don’t have anything,’ and he started to run,” she said, adding that she saw police shoot him three times when his back was turned.