The Raleigh Police Department (RPD) filed a motion Wednesday to join a coalition of news outlets, including INDY, in petitioning the North Carolina Highway Patrol to release body camera footage and other recordings of a state trooper’s interactions with a Raleigh man who died in a crash on October 7.
The unusual move comes after WRAL this week first reported on search warrants from the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) that detailed suspicious actions of a state trooper and his supervisor in the early morning hours following the crash.
Tyrone Mason, 31, died after his vehicle crashed into a concrete barrier on Capital Boulevard. Raleigh police said Mason was speeding and lost control of the car.
The SBI search warrant application describes what special agent M.T. Holcomb viewed on the body worn camera footage of state trooper Garrett Macario from the time of the crash. The warrant states that Macario, who was conducting traffic enforcement in the area, “attempted traffic stop on citizen Tyrone Mason … for movement violation, but disengaged based on the circumstances of Mason’s driving behaviors.”
Mason’s vehicle wrecked after Macario disengaged, the warrant states, killing Mason. After the wreck, Macario parked his vehicle near the crash site and requested RPD, Raleigh Fire and EMS to respond to the wreck.
At 2:32 a.m., body camera footage shows Macario calling Sergeant Matthew Morrison, his supervisor with the State Highway Patrol (SHP), and explaining what happened. Morrison asked Macario if he called in a vehicle chase over the radio and Macario said he did not.
Morrison then told Macario “that the traffic accident was RPD’s problem,” the warrant states, and told Macario “not to tell responding Raleigh Police Department Officers that he tried to stop Mason before the traffic accident.”
RPD officer R. Urena asked Macario on the scene if he was attempting to pull over Mason, leading to the crash, the warrant continues. Macario told Urena that he was not trying to pull Mason over “and that he came up on the wreck and saw the smoke and debris from the vehicle.”
The body camera footage lasted 11 minutes and 45 seconds, the warrant states.
Mason’s mother, Henrietta Mason, and her family’s attorney Sean Cecil are working with nationally known civil rights attorneys Ben Crump and Bakari Sellers on the case. At a March press conference, they advocated for the public release of Macario’s camera footage from the time of the crash.
Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman announced she was dropping more than 180 pending cases involving Macario and Morrison, and reviewing a dozen more, after SBI investigators contacted her in December about the investigation they were conducting into the crash.
In its Wednesday filing, RPD says it consents to public release of audio and video recordings of its officers’ response to the crash. It also requests copies of the SHP recordings of the incident and for the recordings to be released publicly per the request of the news outlets petitioning the court.
“There has been significant media interest and public concern following the Wake County District Attorney’s decision to dismiss hundreds of court cases filed by the responding SHP officer and his supervisor,” the motion states. “The release of the recordings sought is necessary to serve a compelling public interest in promoting transparency and accountability surrounding the circumstances that led to those dismissals.”
Today is the court-ordered deadline for RPD and SHP to provide their recordings from the crash to a judge for review. A hearing is scheduled for May 16.
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