Man drowns as police officers look on without coming to his aid

The family of a 24-year-old who drowned while police looked on, instead of coming to his aid, are outraged after seeing the events unfold on body camera video.

Officers with the police department in Decherd, Tennessee, right outside of Winchester, were in a car pursuit in the early morning hours of June 4, trying to pull over Johnny Baldwin for a minor traffic violation, Winchester Police Chief Richard Lewis told ABC News on Wednesday.

As Baldwin drove down a dead end, Winchester police joined Decherd officers in the pursuit at 1:43 a.m., according to a Winchester Police incident report.

Baldwin then fled on foot, and as the Winchester officers searched the area, they heard something in the water nearby, the report said.

Officers reached the edge of Tims Ford Lake and saw Baldwin halfway across, the report said.

“I gave him orders to stop and swim back towards us, which he did,” an officer said in the report.

Baldwin was about 10 feet from the lake’s bank when “he stopped coming closer and just floated there for a second,” the officer wrote.

Baldwin would “go under water and pop back up several times but would never proceed to the edge where we could get him.” Then he “went under water one last time and never came back up,” the officer wrote.

“He ends up drowning, which is an extremely sad situation,” Lewis told ABC News. “We have released our body camera and we have caught absolute hell for it.”

The body camera video shows Baldwin swimming and an officer calling him “dumb” for jumping in.  (Yahoo News)