Police have released bodycam footage of the moment they shot a man dead as he held a woman at knifepoint – moments after he tried to shoot his wife in the head at point blank range.
HUSBAND STRANGLES WIFE
Serial abuser Elijah Radford, 45, had been charged with strangling wife Charminca Kirk just days before he ambushed her outside an office building in Indianapolis.
He shot her in the hand and dragged her to the ground, but she scrambled to safety when his gun jammed as he pulled the trigger at her head.
Radford, who was suspected of a 2019 hammer attack, jumped in his car and led officers on a 100mph chase across the city before being shot dead as he held a terrified woman hostage at knifepoint.
‘Nonfatal strangulation is the best predictor of future domestic homicides,’ said Kerry Hyatt Bennett, of the Indiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence. ‘We are lucky that she is alive over there on the northwest side.’
COURT HEARD
Two weeks earlier a female neighbor of Kirk’s needed a baseball bat to save her from Radford after he attacked her in the front yard of their home in Zionsville Road.
He was charged with domestic battery, battery causing bodily injury and strangulation after police arrived on the scene.
Marion County Court ordered him not to contact his wife but he was lying in wait for her with a rifle as she emerged from a nearby office building at 3pm on June 25.
He shot her in the hand and tried to shoot her in the head but she ran back to the building when the gun jammed.
He caught up with her as she struggled to open a door now slippery with blood and tried to shoot her in the head again, only to see the rifle clip fall to the ground.
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ARRIVAL OF POLICE
Officers arrived in time to see his maroon Dodge Ram speed off, beginning a high-speed chase down Interstate 465 before he swerved onto Maple Leaf Lane eleven miles later.
Bodycam video from two officers shows them approaching a home with guns raised to find that the door had been nearly forced off its hinges when Radford burst in.
‘We have to go in there,’ one officer says as screams ring out from an upstairs room and the two cops scramble up the stairs to find a woman with her hands raised and Radford holding a knife to her throat.
‘That’s enough, drop the knife!’ an officer yells as the hostage taker struggles with his victim.
A second later Radford exposes his right flank and tumbles to the ground as a shot rings out.
The woman was unharmed but was still screaming as officers unsuccessfully beckon her step over the body of her attacker now lying motionless on the floor.
‘Nonfatal strangulation is the best predictor of future domestic homicides,’ said Kerry Hyatt Bennett, of the Indiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence. ‘We are lucky that she is alive over there on the northwest side.’
