‘Not All Police Shootings Are Equal’: Don Lemon Defends Officer In Adam Toledo Shooting

CNN’s Don Lemon defended the officer involved in the fatal shooting of Adam Toledo while speaking to CNN’s Chris Cuomo Thursday night on CNN’s “Tonight With Don Lemon.”

“Not all police shootings are equal,” Lemon said referring to the death of Adam Toledo, 13, who was fatally shot by a Chicago police officer on March 29 after police say he tried to flee. Bodycam footage from the incident shows an unidentified officer pursuing Toledo and another male on foot before the officer orders Toledo to “Stop right fucking now!”

“If I’m a police officer out there, if I’m anyone out there and there’s been a shooting and someone is running and you see – regardless of the 13-year-old. Thirteen-year-old’s life gone, tragic. But if someone’s running with a gun and they turn around, police officers have to make decisions in split seconds.”

“When you look at the video and you look at the instant, in an instance – the officer probably doesn’t know that the kid is 13, right?”

The officer can be heard screaming “Hey, show me your fucking hands, drop it.” The officer then fires one fatal shot. (RELATED: BLM Rioters Assault CNN Staffer, Chase His Team Out Of Brooklyn Center. The TV Network Hasn’t Even Mentioned It)

NBC 5 Chicago reported police recovered a weapon at the scene and video footage appears to show Toledo turning around.

Cuomo told Lemon that Toledo could have dropped the gun right before he was fatally shot, to which Lemon shot back “if someone comes into your house and you’re like, drop the gun and they say turn around, you don’t know if they’re following your command or you don’t know – you understand what I’m saying?”

“I think at this point we cannot judge all police shootings, we cannot put them all in the same realm,” Lemon continued. “They make split-second decisions and sometimes they are tragic, sometimes they are warranted, and sometimes they are not.”

“It’s terrible that this is a 13-year-old boy and his family is suffering … But we have to see what happens.”