CHINA’S main State broadcaster released security camera footage Thursday showing that a man who was fatally shot by a policeman at a train station behaved aggressively and attacked the officer with a long baton before the officer opened fire.

    The footage released on China Central Television gives a fuller picture of the scuffle leading up to the May 2 shooting of Xu Chunhe in Qing’an County in Heilongjiang Province, some of which had circulated online.

    The incident caused a public outcry over concerns that the policeman used excessive force.

    An internal investigation showed that Li Lebin, the police officer involved in the shooting, had given Xu “multiple warnings” before opening fire and that his use of weapon was “correct and legitimate,” provincial police said in a statement Thursday.

    The shooting was done as part of his duty and Li did not violate protocol, according to the statement.

    A lawyer for Xu’s family, Xie Yanyi, said that the video did not reveal the full extent of Li’s beating of Xu, and that the circumstances immediately before the shooting remained “unclear.”

    “We still see this as a case of suspected intentional homicide, and will pursue legal means to protect our client’s interests,” he said.

    The security footage shows the 45-year-old man punching the officer in the head and later wrestling away the 2-meter-long baton the officer used to try to subdue him and then using it to attack the officer.

    At one point, while the officer is trying to hit the man with the baton, the man picks up his small daughter and holds her in front of himself before hurling her down onto the train station’s paved floor.

    Li, in an interview with CCTV, said the man was hitting him and he had no choice but to aim his fire at the man because it was a crowded train station where a stray bullet might otherwise have injured a bystander.

    (SD-Agencies)