Nov. 28--As the shocking video of a Chicago police officer fatally shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald is played worldwide, other footage from the scene that night has gone missing.
Minutes after McDonald was shot 16 times by Officer Jason Van Dyke on a Southwest Side street, several police officers entered a Burger King located just yards from where the teen fell, demanding to view the restaurant's password-protected surveillance video, Jay Darshane, a district manager for the fast-food chain, told the Tribune this week.
When the police left the restaurant almost two hours later, the video had an inexplicable 86-minute gap that included when McDonald was shot, according to Darshane.
"I was just trying to help the police with their investigation," Darshane said. "I didn't know they were going to delete it."
Darshane revealed to the Tribune for the first time that he testified about the missing footage before a federal grand jury earlier this year.
A technology support employee for Burger King who tried unsuccessfully to recover the video also appeared before the grand jury, he said.
In addition, the FBI hauled away the restaurant's digital video recorder containing all its surveillance images, according to Darshane, who oversees several area Burger Kings.
After Cook County prosecutors charged Van Dyke with first-degree murder on Tuesday, federal prosecutors disclosed their probe of the fatal shooting remains "active and ongoing."
While the restaurant's surveillance system likely wouldn't have caught the shooting itself, at least two cameras positioned to face the restaurant's parking lot and drive-through lane may have captured McDonald's movements in the critical moments before Van Dyke opened fire, according to lawyers for McDonald's family.
In announcing the charge against Van Dyke, State's Attorney Anita Alvarez said forensic testing revealed no evidence that anyone had intentionally erased the Burger King video. NBC5 News first broke the story about the missing footage.
"We have looked at those videos and ... it doesn't appear that it's been tampered with," Alvarez told reporters.
At a news conference at Police Headquarters hours later, police Superintendent Garry McCarthy called allegations that officers had deleted the video "absolutely untrue."
"There were apparently technical difficulties," McCarthy said. "But in no way, shape or form is there any evidence that anything was tampered with, and I think (Alvarez) covered that."
According to court records, moments before he was shot, McDonald had crossed on foot through the Burger King parking lot at 4060 S. Pulaski Road holding a knife in his hand while being tailed by officers who had requested a backup with a Taser.
Under court order to release the police dash-cam video that captured McDonald's shooting, the city made the recording public Tuesday. A day later, in response to an open records request from the Tribune, the city released four other dash-cam videos from the incident, including one from the squad car that Van Dyke was riding in that night. That video shows Van Dyke's police cruiser approaching the Burger King and McDonald cutting in front of the vehicle as he jogs by the front of the restaurant onto Pulaski.
