The Cleveland woman fatally shot last week outside her home on Cleveland's East Side appeared to call police shortly before her death to report a woman in a car sitting outside her house, 911 calls show.
Someone who identified herself as Antwoina Carter called 911 asking for police assistance at about 3:30 a.m. on March 17, saying the girlfriend of her child's father was sitting in a car outside her house on Garfield Avenue.
The recording released the next day by the city of Cleveland ends abruptly before the caller gives more details about the situation.
Officers arrived at the house on Cleveland's East Side at about 4:30 a.m.
Minutes later an unnamed suspect and then the police officers Carter apparently called herself would fire on her car amid a chaotic scene in the tree-lined residential neighborhood.
Carter died of a gunshot wound, according to the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner Thomas Gilson.
“Preliminary testing does not indicate police activity was directly responsible for the decedent’s death,” Gilson said in a statement.
On Friday, Cleveland police released portions of the body camera footage of the March 17, shooting that occurred while officers were at the house in the 10500 block of Garfield Avenue talking to Carter's mother and ended with the 26-year-old's death.
The video, narrated by Police Chief Dorothy Todd, includes a compilation of portions of body cam footage from two unnamed officers and a surveillance camera.
The video includes surveillance camera footage that shows a suspect leaning out the passenger side window of a vehicle and firing a rapid series of shots at Carter’s car as the two vehicles drive north on East 105th Street.
Meanwhile, about a block away, Carter's mother and another man were standing in the cold speaking with two Cleveland police officers in their front yard on Garfield Avenue, officer bodycam footage shows.
It was about 4:30 a.m., and the mother said she was concerned for her daughter who had left home while she slept. The mother told police someone had shot into her daughter's parked car earlier that evening, breaking glass.
The officers recommended the family seek a protection order and seemed ready to leave when, suddenly, the rapid series of gunshots from East 105th Street is heard on the officers' body cameras.
Their footage and the surveillance camera show Carter's car turning east onto Garfield Avenue from the direction of the gunfire toward the officers standing outside her home with her mother.
“That’s my daughter’s car,” the woman yells while the gunshots are still occurring. “He’s shooting at my daughter!”
The two officers move toward their patrol car parked along Garfield Avenue with their guns raised, bodycam shows. A car’s headlights can be seen coming toward them.
Officers fire at the car speeding towards them and continue to fire after it's passed.
Carter’s car sideswipes the patrol car and continues past them on Garfield. Neither officer appears to have been struck, according to the footage.
The woman at the residence can be heard shouting, “That’s my daughter. You’re shooting at my daughter. That’s my daughter,” as officers were firing at the car.
They then called in an “officer-involved shooting” over the radio.
The second car with the person who had shot at Carter on East 105th Street doesn't follow Carter down Garfield and the only vehicle that approaches officers appears to have been Carter's, according to the footage.
According to a statement from the Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Department, which is investigating the incident, Carter was alone in the vehicle.
It doesn't appear that shots were fired from Carter's car, the body cam and surveillance camera footage shows.
The Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Department is handling the investigation.
The initial description of events provided by the county on the day of the shooting described officers as “returning fire.”
“Preliminary information indicates that Cleveland Police officers were at a call for service in the 10500 block of Garfield Avenue when two vehicles traveling at a high rate of speed drove by, with shots being fired from one of the vehicles,” according to Cuyahoga County spokesperson Jennifer Ciaccia. “Officers returned fire. One vehicle fled the scene. The second vehicle crashed nearby.”
Todd directed all follow-up questions to the sheriff’s department.
