Store Manager: Chicago PD erased footage of shooting that lead to murder charges

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Minutes after McDonald was shot 16 times by Officer Jason Van Dyke on a Southwest Side street, several police officers entered a Burger King located just yards from where the teen fell, demanding to view the restaurant's password-protected surveillance video, Jay Darshane, a district manager for the fast-food chain, told the Tribune this week.

When the police left the restaurant almost two hours later, the video had an inexplicable 86-minute gap that included when McDonald was shot, according to Darshane.

"I was just trying to help the police with their investigation," Darshane said. "I didn't know they were going to delete it."

Darshane revealed to the Tribune for the first time that he testified about the missing footage before a federal grand jury earlier this year.

A technology support employee for Burger King who tried unsuccessfully to recover the video also appeared before the grand jury, he said.

In addition, the FBI hauled away the restaurant's digital video recorder containing all its surveillance images, according to Darshane, who oversees several area Burger Kings.

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The equipment had been in perfect working order for weeks before the shooting, Darshane said. But the next morning, Burger King discovered the 86-minute gap when investigators with the Independent Police Review Authority, which investigates police shootings, sought to make a DVD copy of the surveillance video. Missing was any footage from 9:13 p.m. to 10:39 p.m., Darshane said.

When the video system kicked back on, it recorded two police officers in the Burger King office who appeared to be looking at something on the monitor over and over, according to Michael Robbins, an attorney representing McDonald's family.

"It is curious," Robbins said. "If they got there and turned it on and found that there was no video, what were they looking at for two hours?"

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