Feidin Santana being interviewed by Lester Holt
On April 4, Feidin Santana
was on the phone, walking to work in North Charleston, South Carolina, when an event that would soon grip the nation happened just a few feet away from his path. Knowing what we know now—that Officer Michael Slager
murdered Walter Scott in cold blood and attempted to frame him by planting a stun gun on him—it's increasingly clear that Feidin Santana acted with extreme bravery when he filmed what turned out to be the worst thing he's ever witnessed.
Now, Feidin has real concerns for his own safety:
"I won't deny that I knew the magnitude of this, and I even thought about erasing the video," Santana said in an interview on MSNBC's "All In With Chris Hayes" Wednesday.
"I felt that my life, with this information, might be in danger. I thought about erasing the video and just getting out of the community, you know Charleston, and living some place else," the 23-year-old said. "I knew the cop didn't do the right thing."
In an interview with TODAY's Matt Lauer on Thursday, Santana said: "I'm still scared."
"I say life changed in a matter of seconds. I never thought this would happen, that I would be a witness," he told TODAY's Matt Lauer in an exclusive interview Thursday. "I'm still scared."
Before the public ever saw the video, Santana went to the police station to turn it in, but changed his mind and left. After seeing that the police were telling lies in the media about the shooting, he found Scott's family and
turned the video over to them, as you can read below the fold.
"He wanted to see what reports were coming from the North Charleston Police Department because of the fact that they may have told the truth,” Walter Scott's brother told TIME on Wednesday. “And when they continued with the lies, he said, ‘I have to come forward.'”
Santana told MSNBC's Melvin that he read the police report and took issue with its account of what happened. Santana said that he went to the police station following the shooting to inform them that he had witnessed and recorded it. After being told to wait, Santana left without handing any information to the police after reconsidering the situation. Santana told Melvin that he didn't believe police would properly handle the video which prompted him to give it to Scott's family.
Here's an extended interview Santana gave to MSNBC's Craig Melvin:
Here's an interview Santana did with NBC's Matt Lauer: