WATCH: Miss. Public Safety Commissioner responds to deadly officer involved shooting in Gulfport

GULFPORT, Miss. (WLOX) - The call for answers across the Coast continues one week after 15-year-old Jaheim McMillan was shot and killed by a Gulfport Police Officer.

On Wednesday, the State’s Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell talked with WLOX to give an update on where the investigation into the deadly officer involved shooting stands.

“I can’t try this in the court of public opinion,” Tindell said. “We need to be able to do a thorough investigation.”

Video from dash cam, body cam and from the Family Dollar Store captured the moments when a Gulfport Police officer fatally shot Jaheim McMillan. According to Tindell, the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation is aggressively combing through those videos.

“There’s multiple angles and multiple views,” Tindell said. “We want to make sure what we do and the reason we have the policy the way it is as far as not releasing any of the video footage until the investigation is complete is so you don’t just give out video in bits and pieces, but paint the whole picture.”

Even with the public outcry to see the videos, Tindall says the investigation needs to be completed before videos are released. His goal is for the process to be wrapped up by the end of the year.

“Not only will the video be made available, but our file will be made available as well as our investigative narrative and our work can be scrutinized,” Tindell said. “The ultimate decisions of a grand jury or jury can be scrutinized.”

As the investigation continues Tindell hopes steps will be taken to prevent deadly incidents like this going forward.

“We need to as a state, as a city and society take a look at what young people are doing and ask ourselves why there’s so many guns in the hands of young people. From a law enforcement perspective, we always have to be improving our training, we need to pay better salaries, get better quality officers and train them. Those are all things I think as a state we’re working on and hopefully we’ll see improvement.”

Tindell said MBI is still looking for witness statements and if you have any information surrounding the officer involved shooting you can contact the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation.

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