SEATTLE _ Surveillance video from the hallway outside the apartment of Charleena Lyles shows she never left the apartment, nor was her home burglarized, in the hours before she was shot by officers, according to a Seattle police spokesman.
Sgt. Sean Whitcomb said a review of 24 hours of surveillance video shows that no one entered the apartment until Officers Steven McNew and Jason Anderson arrived after Lyles called and reported a burglary Sunday morning.
Whitcomb said the department plans to release the surveillance video _ nearly seven gigabytes of data _ on Thursday.
The mother of four had only recently moved into the Brettler Family Place low-income and special needs housing after years of being homeless; she had called police saying someone had broken into her fourth-floor apartment.
Whitcomb said police are releasing the information in an attempt to be transparent as the investigation proceeds.
According to a transcript of audio from a police car dashboard camera _ the officers carry small microphones on their uniforms _ Lyles tells them that "someone broke into my house and took my things."
"I just ran out to the store so I left it unlocked," she said, mentioning jewelry and a missing Xbox.
It was at that point where scuffling can be heard on the audio before one of the officers yells, "Get Back! Get Back!" Seconds later, there is a volley of gunfire. The officers said she had two knives.
A time stamp on a segment of the hallway surveillance video already released by the department indicates fewer than three minutes passed between when the officers walked into the apartment and shots were fired.
Three of her four children, a 1-year-old, a 4-year-old with Down syndrome and an 11- year-old, were in the apartment at the time. Seattle Police Chief Kathleen O'Toole has said the shooting occurred in the kitchen.
Lyles' death has prompted outrage from her family and the community and soul-searching by police and community leaders over what could have been done to prevent the shooting of the 30-year-old woman, who was African-American.
Lyles' family said Sunday that they believe race was a factor. The officers who shot Lyles are white, police said.
Her family has also said Lyles had been struggling with mental health issues for the past year and was concerned that authorities would take her children.
Officers McNew and Anderson had undergone Crisis Intervention Training (CIT) and one was a certified CIT officer after undergoing additional intensive de-escalation and mental health intervention training, O'Toole said.
James Bible, the civil rights attorney representing Lyles' family, criticized the release of the video and questioned the department's motives.
"What this sounds like is that police to form some kind of interference, that either she's mentally ill or that she's flat out lying and trying to get officers to the apartment," Bible said Thursday. "Those inferences are inappropriate. This is not really a fact finding. It's more like I feel they're trying to taint the perceptions of Charleena."
Bible said that the casual chat recorded between officers talking before walking up to Lyles' apartment shows that, in his mind, "They were not taking her plight seriously enough, and she died for it."
Whitcomb said the department plans to release additional information on its ongoing investigation into the shooting over the next few days. The investigation and its review could take several weeks or months, he said.
Two weeks earlier, on June 5, Lyles was arrested and charged with harassment and obstruction after she allegedly held two officers in her apartment while holding large shears. She was eventually persuaded to drop them, and was referred to mental health court. Police had responded to the apartment on a domestic disturbance call.
During that incident, officers reported Lyles _ who had talked about morphing into a wolf with her daughter _ was "out of touch with reality" and suffering hallucinations.
