Up First from NPR

Podbit · Up First from NPR

How an anti-police violence protest ended in a teen’s death

Explore episode Jun 14, 2026

Where this was said

Ashley Durellis: Filmmaker, Arrestee, Keeper of Secrets

At 33:00 · chapter starts 28:20

The reporters track down Ashley Durellis at her job — a café where she's simultaneously managing the drive-through and taking a Zoom call — and press her about the man on her video. She describes him as a big white man and is emphatic: he is the shooter. She says she kept following him around because she wanted police to find him. Her own arrest came about a week after she posted her video; cops swarmed her on a street corner and took her away in a police van on a charge of rendering criminal assistance — essentially, helping cover up a crime. She was never formally charged. What she reveals about police priorities is striking: when they interrogated her, she says, they asked one question about the shooter but spent most of their time trying to get her to identify other protesters who had been at the scene. In Durellis's telling, police were more interested in the protest movement than in the murder.

True Crime
Ashley Durellis: Filming the Aftermath and Getting Arrested

How an anti-police violence protest ended in a teen’s death · Jun 14, 2026 True Crime

Ashley Durellis livestreamed the aftermath of Antonio Mays Jr.'s shooting, including the apparent shooter collecting shell casings. A week later she was arrested for rendering criminal assistance. She says she was documenting, not helping. When police interrogated her, they asked more about protesters than the shooter.

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