A Florida police officer had his gun aimed at a Black college student shortly before the driver was pulled from his car and beaten in a recorded encounter that recently sparked widespread outrage, civil rights lawyers said Tuesday.

The officer standing in front of William McNeil Jr.’s car appeared to have the 22-year-old at gunpoint as another officer shattered his windshield and began dragging him from the vehicle, according to body camera footage. Civil rights attorney Ben Crump and other lawyers presented a still image from the video during a news conference in Chicago.

They called it one of several discrepancies from initial police accounts, called for the officers involved to be fired, and said a federal lawsuit is being prepared.

“Read the police report. Watch the video. And see if they are telling the truth,” Crump said. “They don’t add up.”

McNeil says he was traumatized and injured

Footage from a camera mounted inside McNeil’s car shows glass shards flying into his chin as he sat still. An officer then struck him in the face and punched him in the head seconds after he was pulled from the vehicle.

A police report says he was punched six more times in the hamstring after being knocked to the ground.

Crump and other attorneys for McNeil said they believe the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office has not released all available video footage.

McNeil said the ordeal left him traumatized and with a brain injury. He required stitches after a tooth broke and pierced his lip, according to his attorneys. He and his legal team spoke during the annual convention of the National Bar Association, the nation’s largest organization of Black attorneys and judges.

Ahead of the news conference, Crump led a prayer with McNeil and his mother.

“That day I was telling the truth,” McNeil told reporters. “I was being held at gunpoint and I didn’t feel safe.”

A spokesperson for the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office said Tuesday that “due to pending litigation, we would be unable to speak further on the incident.”

Sheriff says video lacks full context

After McNeil’s video of the Feb. 19 traffic stop gained millions of views online earlier this month, Jacksonville Sheriff T.K. Waters disputed claims made by the legal team.

Waters, who is Black, said McNeil had been repeatedly told to exit the vehicle. Though McNeil initially had his door open while speaking to an officer, he later closed it and appeared to keep it locked for about three minutes before officers forcibly removed him, the video shows.

Waters said the footage from the in-car camera “does not comprehensively capture the circumstances surrounding the incident.”

“Cameras can only capture what can be seen and heard,” he said during a news conference in Florida last week. “So much context and depth are absent from recorded footage because a camera simply cannot capture what is known to the people depicted in it.”

McNeil had been pulled over for allegedly not having his headlights on during inclement weather, although it was daytime, his lawyers said.

Crump claimed the sheriff’s office uses headlight violations as a pretext for stopping Black drivers. He said his team found that Jacksonville officers cited 78 motorists for the violation in the past three years — 63 of them were Black.

Police report claims McNeil reached near a knife

A disputed point in the police report is the claim that McNeil reached toward the floorboard, where deputies later found a knife during a post-arrest search.

“The suspect was reaching for the floorboard of the vehicle where a large knife was sitting,” Officer D. Bowers wrote.

But Crump said video shows McNeil “never reaches for anything.” A second officer noted in his report that McNeil kept his hands up as Bowers smashed the window.

Lawyers say officers withheld video

Last week, the sheriff released body camera footage from two officers at the scene.

On Tuesday, Crump accused the department of selectively releasing footage to “explain away what happened.”

“We know there are other videos that exist that we do not have,” he said. “We don’t think this is the only officer who drew his gun.”

The released footage shows at least five officers near McNeil as he was dragged from the car and handcuffed on the ground.

A third officer’s bodycam video — also released — only shows officers searching McNeil’s car after the arrest.

Much of what happened during the physical altercation is difficult to see in the released footage due to the close proximity and limited camera angles. Some of the alleged actions occurred outside the bodycam frame.

“Even when he was handcuffed, they repeatedly slammed his head to the concrete,” Crump said.

Shortly after the arrest, McNeil pleaded guilty to resisting an officer without violence and driving with a suspended license, Waters said. The State Attorney’s Office determined the officers did not violate any criminal laws. An internal investigation is ongoing.

McNeil is a biology major and a former marching band member at Livingstone College, a historically Black college in Salisbury, North Carolina. The arrest occurred in February but gained attention only after McNeil’s in-car footage went viral this month.