The Bloomingtonian has obtained dashcam videos and body cam videos Friday of Monroe County Sheriff’s Deputy Deandre Moxley and Reserve Deputy Jason Miller to examine the details of the April 17, 2021, fatal pursuit of Bloomington resident Malik Ali Malik.
The video published here documents the pursuit from the time that it began, until the second explosion of Malik’s vehicle. One video is the dashcam footage from Deputy Moxley’s MCSO vehicle, and the other is Moxley’s bodycam footage.
Malik had an active arrest warrant for failure to appear on drug and armed robbery charges in Monroe County. He also fled from members of law enforcement during a traffic stop in Johnson County, but after a pursuit, was captured, and placed under arrest.
The Bloomingtonian first requested the videos in April, but the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office denied the release of the videos, which the office said are investigatory records. However, Monday Monroe County Attorney Lee Baker wrote in an official letter to The Bloomingtonian that up to 33 redacted videos would be available for a fee of 75 dollars per video at a total cost of 2475-dollars.
The Bloomingtonian chose to purchase all the videos for two deputies named in a crash report released to the Bloomingtonian after the April public records request. At the time the crash report and some photographs were released, the videos were not made available.
The fee for The Bloomingtonian to purchase the 13 videos was 975-dollars. The videos, which are just over 2 gigabytes of data, arrived on a silver flash drive. Faces of witnesses and the body of Malik after the fiery crash are obscured, but the videos seem otherwise unredacted. The dashcam, and body cam appear to have split the video into chunks of data, and each chunk of data was treated as a separate video for a fee of 75 dollars each.
According to a crash report, Malik was spotted at the Crew Carwash by a member of the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department on April 17th. Later as several MCSO vehicles converged on Malik’s location a high-speed pursuit began.
However, due to speeds of up to 105 miles per hour, as stated on the radio traffic on the dashcam in deputy Moxley’s vehicle, the chase was terminated in western Monroe County by Lt. Troy Thomas of the MCSO. However, moments later, Moxley can be seen passing by the deputies and continuing the chase. Since there is no radio traffic, and the investigation report has not been released, it’s unclear if anybody from the MCSO authorized the pursuit to continue.
The speed of Moxley’s vehicle and the roads he used to catch up to Malik is not on the video, and radio traffic is silent until Thomas can be heard checking his speed by radio communication. Moxley tells Thomas the pursuit speed was not going over 70mph.
Eventually, Moxley sees Malik passing at a high rate of speed on Ind. 45, and as he begins to catch up to Malik, Malik’s car is seen hitting a tree at a high rate of speed on W. Dinsmore Road and immediately exploding on impact before it beginning to smoke. At this time smoke and growing flames are visible coming from the engine area of a white Kia Sportage Malik had been driving.
Deputies, with their guns drawn, tell Malik to get out of the vehicle, but there is no response. A deputy can be heard pleading, “We’re trying to help you.”
After a couple of minutes, with guns drawn, there is still no response, and the flames get large enough that a deputy says a fire extinguisher will be of no use. After the car explodes, the deputies began to make efforts to move their own vehicles and to get a man out of a nearby house.
At no time before the second explosion does the video show a deputy at the vehicle trying to get Malik out. Deputy Moxley can be heard saying, “We gotta get him out,” but then deputies approach the vehicle then retreat due to fuel leaking from the burning vehicle.
Finally, members of the county fire department arrive to put out the still burning car. The video seems to show a deceased individual inside the vehicle but is obscured due to blurring by software used by the sheriff’s office to protect the privacy of Malik. Malik was later identified by the Monroe County coroner.
The Bloomingtonian editorial policy is to not publish photos, or videos, of deceased individuals. Therefore, a decision has been made at this time to not release those sections of video despite the blurring.
The 13 videos comprise several hours of footage, and The Bloomington is still sifting through the material.
