The Moment Before the Trigger Wasn’t the Whole Story

The first thing I saw was a man behind the wheel of a police SUV, and the first thing I heard was an officer telling him to stop. The footage lasted only seconds, but those seconds carried the weight of everything that happened before them. In February, I was watching body-camera footage from a Concord car dealership, where 29-year-old Brandon Combs had allegedly tried to steal a vehicle. Officer Timothy Larson was on routine patrol when he said he saw Combs attempting to take a car from the dealership. What happened next moved so quickly that there was almost no room between the command, the movement, and the gunfire. Combs got into the driver's seat of the police SUV, and Larson ordered him to stop. The commands continued, but the vehicle kept moving. Then I heard the words every officer knows can change a scene forever: “Shots fired.” The video stopped just before the actual shooting, leaving me staring at the screen and wondering how anyone could understand what happened from those final seconds alone.

According to police, Larson had encountered Combs during what began as a vehicle-theft investigation. It wasn't supposed to become a deadly encounter. Larson was on routine patrol, saw what police described as an attempted theft, and approached. Somewhere between that first contact and the moment Combs climbed into the police SUV, the situation changed completely. The body-camera footage showed the moments leading up to the shooting, including repeated commands for Combs to stop. But there is something about watching footage like that that can make a person forget how much information exists outside the frame. You see the officer. You see the vehicle. You hear the commands. You watch the suspect move. And then you reach the point where everything becomes irreversible. What you don't see in that instant is the investigation that comes afterward, when every decision has to be examined from a different angle.

The State Bureau of Investigation eventually reviewed the deadly shooting. Their finding was that Larson had not used excessive force when he fired. The reason was tied to the most important detail in those final moments: police said Combs was driving a vehicle in Larson's direction, effectively putting the officer in danger. That distinction mattered. The question wasn't simply whether an officer had fired a weapon. Investigators had to consider what Larson reasonably faced when the vehicle moved toward him. The footage showed Combs ignoring several commands to stop, and police said the vehicle was pointed at Larson. From that perspective, the shooting was determined not to be excessive. But just when it seemed the investigation had answered the biggest question, another one emerged—one that had nothing to do with whether Larson was justified in pulling the trigger.

Because even though the SBI determined the shooting itself was justified, Concord police ultimately fired Larson.

The reason was something that happened after the gunfire. Investigators said Larson lied to them about details surrounding the shooting. That changed the story in a way I found almost harder to process than the shooting itself. An officer can be placed in a situation where a split-second decision determines whether someone lives or dies. But after that moment passes, there is another responsibility: telling the truth about what happened. The investigation wasn't finished when the weapon was fired. In some ways, that was when the second investigation began. Every movement, every command, every decision had to be reconstructed. And according to police, Larson gave investigators an account that did not match what they later determined to be the facts.

That creates an uncomfortable distinction that is easy to miss when watching the footage. The finding that the shooting was not excessive did not mean everything Larson did was considered acceptable. Those were two separate questions. One concerned the deadly use of force in the moment. The other concerned his conduct during the investigation afterward. The answer to the first question was that investigators found the shooting justified. The answer to the second was that police determined Larson had lied, and that resulted in his termination. Both things could be true at the same time. The shooting could be legally justified while the officer could still face consequences for what he told investigators afterward.

I kept thinking about that as I watched the footage again. There is a natural temptation to treat a body camera like a complete record of reality. It feels objective because the camera doesn't have emotions. It doesn't forget. It doesn't get nervous. It simply records. But a camera only captures what is in front of its lens. It doesn't automatically explain what happened before it started recording, what someone knew at a particular moment, or what happened afterward in an investigation room. In this case, the footage showed the commands and the vehicle. The SBI investigation provided the finding about the shooting. The department's decision provided another piece of the story: the officer's account to investigators became part of the case too.

And that was the detail that stayed with me.

Brandon Combs entered the encounter accused of trying to steal a vehicle. Then he got behind the wheel of a police SUV. Then, according to investigators, he ignored commands to stop while driving toward Larson. The encounter ended with Combs being shot. Those facts form one part of the story. But the officer who fired the shots also became the subject of an investigation, and his own actions after the shooting ultimately cost him his job. The same incident produced two very different conclusions: the force used in the critical moment was found not to be excessive, while the officer's statements afterward were judged serious enough to lead to his firing.

That is why the most important part of this story isn't just the sound of the gunshots. It is what happened after the sound stopped. A deadly encounter can be over in seconds, but accountability doesn't end when the trigger is pulled. Investigators still have to reconstruct the scene, examine the evidence, compare statements with footage, and determine whether the people involved told the truth. In this case, the investigation drew a line between the shooting itself and the officer's conduct afterward. One decision was found justified. Another led to termination.

I think that's what makes the final seconds of the footage so difficult to watch. They look like the ending, but they weren't. The gunfire was only the end of the confrontation. Everything that followed—the investigation, the questions, the examination of the officer's account, and the decision to fire him—became part of the story too. When people see a few seconds of police body-camera footage, they often want those seconds to tell them everything. But sometimes the real story begins when the video stops.