‘Step out!’ Video shows exonerated Broward man fighting deputy before fatal shooting

An exonerated man who spent over 16 years behind bars after being wrongfully convicted of an armed robbery in Broward County fought a Georgia deputy before he was shot and killed during a traffic stop, footage released Wednesday shows.

Attorneys representing his family have said that the trauma of being wrongfully imprisoned for more than a decade and a half, combined with the deputy’s behavior, may have “triggered” 53-year-old Leonard Allan Cure.

The dash and body-worn camera footage shows a deputy of the Camden County Sheriff’s Office stopping Cure for speeding on a noisy Interstate 95 around 7:30 a.m. Monday.

“Step out! Step out! Get out! Get out!” Sheriff’s Staff Sgt. Buck Aldridge yells as soon as he sets his feet out of his police vehicle and as he approaches Cure’s pickup truck near I-95’s mile marker 9.

Cure then steps out, and the deputy tells him to put his hands against the pickup truck. Cure, standing with his hands by his side, says he isn’t going to do it. When Aldridge tries to grab one of his arms, saying “put your damn hands back here,” Cure moves his arm away.

“Who are you?” asks Cure.

Aldridge identifies himself as a staff sergeant of the Camden Sheriff’s Office as he takes his Taser out of the holster and points it at Cure. When Cure identifies himself, the deputy says: “I don’t care. Step to the rear of this vehicle.”

“In the name of who?” Cure asks. “In the name of the law of the state of Georgia,” Aldridge responds. “Step back here now or you’re getting tased.”

Cure, while standing on the side of the truck, put his hands on the back of his vehicle. After Aldridge tells him to turn around, Cure only turns his head.

Aldridge is heard requesting backup over the radio. He orders Cure to put his hands behind his back, grabbing one of Cure’s wrists, but the man pulls away.

“Put the hands behind your back or you are getting tased,” Aldridge says.

When Cure asks why he is going to be tased, Aldridge responds: “Because you are under arrest for speeding and reckless driving.” It is the first time the deputy is heard telling Cure he is under arrest.

Answering questions from Cure, Aldridge tells him he was driving at 100 mph.

“That’s a speeding ticket, right?” asks Cure.

“Tickets in the state of Georgia are criminal offenses,” Aldridge responds.

After Aldridge tells Cure again to put his hands behind his back, the man points toward the sky with one hand. That’s when the deputy shoots him with the Taser while repeating the order. Cure then turns around, starts grabbing the Taser’s wires and ultimately the deputy’s hand holding the weapon.

They fight until Cure appears to grab Aldridge glasses. Then the deputy puts the man in a headlock, but Cure pushes him against the back of the pickup truck, putting one of his hands on Aldridge’s chin and forcefully pushing his head back. The deputy starts hitting Cure with a baton but the man continues to push his head further back.

As Cure seems to have overpowered Aldridge, the deputy takes out his firearm and shoots Cure. The shot or shots can’t be heard in the video provided by the sheriff’s office. Cure falls down.

“Shots fired!” Aldridge calls over the radio. “Stay down!” he tells Cure multiple times as the wounded man squirms on the pavement.

Aldridge keeps requesting backup over the radio but none arrives. About five minutes after the traffic stop began, another man driving an armored car gets out of the vehicle and points his gun at Cure. Aldridge, breathing heavily, asks the civilian to cover him as he approaches Cure.

Over six minutes into the traffic stop, Aldridge puts Cure, no longer moving, in handcuffs. Backup then arrives. The deputy’s colleagues take turns performing CPR on Cure’s lifeless body. Aldridge is heard crying, sobbing — Cure is dead.

Attorneys, family react

The Innocence Project of Florida, the organization which collaborated with Broward’s Conviction Review Unit to get justice for Cure, said Thursday in a news release that the police footage serves “as a chilling reminder of the lasting trauma that exonerees carry with them every single day.”

“Interactions with law enforcement can evoke profound anxiety, fear, and an ever-present worry about being wronged by a system that has already taken so much from them,” the organization said. “We believe the officer’s aggressive behavior toward Lenny, and his placing Lenny under arrest, triggered a response you would expect from someone who spent 16 years in prison for a crime he did not commit.”

Attorney Ben Crump, a trial lawyer who specializes in civil rights cases, announced Wednesday during a news conference in Camden County that he has been retained to represent Cure’s family along with other attorneys.

Mary Cure, Leonard Cure’s mother, said that after her son was released from prison and exonerated in 2020, she constantly worried that he would be stopped, beat up or killed by police.

“That is torture,” Cure said.

An exonerated man

Cure was arrested in 2003 for the robbery of a Walgreens drug store in Dania Beach. He was convicted of armed robbery with a firearm and aggravated assault with a gun the following year. Cure, who was in his 30s at the time, got sentenced to life imprisonment — spending more than 16 years behind bars.

Broward’s Conviction Review Unit, founded in 2019 to give additional oversight to cases that warrant a second look, issued a 14-page memorandum in April 2020 recommending the modification of Cure’s sentence to allow for his immediate release from prison as they investigated further. After a few weeks, the Circuit Court for the 17th Judicial Circuit modified Cure’s sentence to time served. He was released soon after.

Innocence Project of Florida Executive Director Seth Miller said there was evidence that increased Cure’s probability of innocence.

“During this collaborative reinvestigation, the CRU determined that documentary evidence, in the form of an ATM receipt, proved that Lenny was miles away from the crime scene at the time of the robbery,” Miller said Monday. “The reinvestigation also concluded that a photo array shown to one of the victims contained multiple photos of Lenny and was therefore an unreliable, suggestive identification procedure.”

In October 2020, the review unit concluded the case against Cure “is so weak that it gives rise to a reasonable doubt as to his culpability — and that he’s most likely innocent.” And in December of that year, the court vacated Cure’s judgment and sentence.

He was officially exonerated days later, and sometime after moved to Georgia to start a new life.

In June of this year, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a claims bill granting Cure $817,000 in compensation for his wrongful conviction.