Body cam video shows Raleigh police take down shooter firing at officers near Raleigh middle school

Body camera video released Wednesday shows the moment a man shooting at Raleigh officers in March was fatally shot by police.

On Monday, March 27, Raleigh Police Chief Estella Patterson said a man was firing shots at cars and police officers in a neighborhood near Ligon Magnet Middle School. Police shot the suspect, Jorge Vega-Lesama. Authorities transported him to a hospital, where he died from his injuries.

Video posted on YouTube Wednesday by the Raleigh Police Department shows the moment officers stood behind a car and fired at Vega-Lesama from across the street.

Watch the video on YouTube. Warning: Graphic content.

In the video, officers can be heard talking on their radios, saying, "Standby, we've got him." Multiple shots are then fired at the officers, who yell, "shots fired, shots fired ... the suspect is shooting at us ... suspect is actively firing at us." More gunfire is heard before the officer says, "Suspect is down, I need EMS. Let's approach slowly."

Two officers approach the suspect, on the ground of a driveway, with their weapons drawn as they call for EMS.

Patterson said the shooter hit at least two civilian vehicles and two police vehicles but said no residents or police officers were injured. She said the shooter's impact "spanned several blocks, endangering many lives."

It was not clear if the shooting was connected to the school, but "some of the 911 callers were teachers from the school," Patterson said.

Gary Duvall, principal of Ligon Magnet Middle School, said the school went into a code yellow lockdown at 7 a.m. after a shooting was reported nearby, and no one was allowed to enter or exit the school building. Students and staff who were still making their way to campus at the time were allowed to enter, and school district spokeswoman Lisa Luten said they were not near the site of the shots.

Ligon parent: School should have alerted parents immediately

Ben Harris, father of a sixth grader, asked why the school did not use the "Talking Points" text messaging service to alert parents to the threat. He said he looked to his phone after seeing "a long procession of police cars with their lights on" as he was dropping off his daughter.

Luten noted that the text system has a character limit, and is "not ideal for messages that contain lots of information."

"When we notify parents of a situation that requires their immediate action (like to pick up their kids), a phone call is made," Luten said.

On Monday, the school sent an email to parents, but Harris doesn't think that was urgent enough.

"Email shouldn't be the first channel of communication for this sort of thing," he said. "Email is something that you check once in a while. Text or call, or use the app to communicate with parents, that's what I would use if I was a school administrator to communicate with parents in this situation."

Rebecca Snowden, who runs a carpool with other parents, got the email but agrees a text might be quicker.

"I think that perhaps we could implement a text system where we could get information a little more quickly, but this is a downtown school, and there's a lot of different ways to communicate with families," she said.

The first emergency calls came in before 7 a.m., when officers responded to a neighborhood in the 700 block of Cumberland Street near Rock Quarry Road. The school lockdown lasted until about 7:30 a.m., and Luten said, "Families were notified at 7:50 a.m."

WRAL News heard in audio obtained from scanners "suspect is actively firing at us .... shots fired at police ... suspect is down."

The neighborhood was still blocked off Monday at noon, and forensic teams were focused on a Raleigh Police Department SUV surrounded by evidence markers. Police also spent the morning going in and out of a home on Cumberland Street.

The lockdown was lifted by 7:30 a.m. Police were stationed outside as a precaution, and students were entering the building as normal.

The campus is located southeast of downtown Raleigh, near Chavis Park.