Bodycam released shows the arrest of a man later found decomposing in the back of a cruiser after being arrested

Newly released body camera footage is giving the public a closer look at the final police interaction Eric Valencia had before he later turned up dead in the back of an out-of-service patrol car outside the Azusa Police Department, and the footage is only deepening the sense that this case remains both disturbing and difficult to explain.

In ABC7’s report, anchor Marc Brown said the new video shows officers speaking with Valencia during his March 20 arrest on suspicion of driving under the influence and child endangerment, nearly a week before his body was discovered. In a separate video, crime commentator Ape Huncho stitched together bodycam footage, commentary, and the later discovery scene, framing the case as one of the most baffling custody-adjacent deaths to emerge in recent memory.

Taken together, the two reports do not solve the mystery.

What they do provide is a clearer timeline: Valencia was stopped, questioned, tested, arrested, kept in custody for several days, released from jail, later seen entering the back of an unlocked, out-of-service patrol vehicle, and then found dead there days afterward. The police department has acknowledged that the car should have been locked, and the official cause of death still has not been publicly confirmed.

That last point matters more than anything else, because in a case this strange, every missing answer becomes its own source of public suspicion.

The Bodycam Shows A Nervous Driver During A DUI Arrest

Marc Brown said the bodycam footage released by Azusa police comes from March 20, the night officers arrested Eric Valencia. The video shows an officer telling him he seems nervous, with Valencia responding that this was his first time and that he was scared for his boys.

That exchange is brief, but it gives the footage an emotional tone that is hard to ignore. Valencia does not come across as aggressive or combative in the clip Brown highlighted. He sounds anxious, worried about his children, and overwhelmed by what is happening.

Ape Huncho’s video adds more of the encounter, showing officers conducting a traffic stop after spotting a vehicle driving without its headlights on. In that footage, Valencia is questioned about drinking, appears to have slurred speech, and struggles through field sobriety exercises while trying to explain that he is nervous because his children are in the car.

The bodycam, as both Brown and Ape Huncho make clear, captures a routine-looking DUI investigation, at least at first. Officers noticed possible signs of intoxication, asked Valencia to perform tests, and eventually arrested him. Ape Huncho notes that a preliminary screening indicated his blood alcohol level was around twice the legal limit, though Valencia also told officers he was an alcoholic and that alcohol would show up in his blood.

None of that explains what happened later, but it does establish that the initial encounter itself does not appear extraordinary on its face. If anything, that normalcy is part of what makes the outcome so unsettling.

He Was Released, Then Somehow Ended Up In A Patrol Car Outside The Station

Brown’s report lays out the next key turn in the timeline.

He said surveillance footage previously released by the department shows Valencia on March 23, the day he was released, wandering up to a patrol car parked outside the Azusa police station and getting into the back seat. The car, police later acknowledged, was unlocked even though it was out of service.

That is the hinge point in the whole case.

By that stage, Valencia had been released from custody. Ape Huncho says he had his personal property back, including a working cell phone and some food, and that charges had not yet been formally filed because prosecutors were waiting on toxicology results. In other words, he was no longer being held, but he also was not yet free of legal jeopardy.

Then, for reasons that remain unclear, he entered the back of the patrol car.

There is something chilling about how ordinary that sentence sounds compared with what followed. A man walks out of jail, gets into the back of an unlocked police cruiser parked outside the station, and is later found dead there. That is not a normal chain of events by any standard, and it is why the story immediately exploded into public controversy once his body was discovered.

The obvious questions are still the biggest ones: why did he get into the car, what happened once he was inside, and why was he not found sooner?

The Discovery Scene Was As Grim As It Sounds

Marc Brown said the department also released bodycam footage from March 26, when Valencia was found in the patrol vehicle. That was three days after he had been seen entering it.

Ape Huncho’s report includes more of the discovery audio, and it is grim. A maintenance worker, apparently preparing vehicles to return to service, describes a terrible smell coming from the car and says that when he looked in the back, he initially thought it might be a homeless person. Once he opened the door, the reality became clear very quickly.

An officer in the footage is heard saying Valencia looked like he was decomposing.

That detail alone explains much of the anger that followed. This was not a case where a person had been hidden in some remote yard or abandoned warehouse. He was found in the back of a police vehicle parked outside a police station. Even if no one intentionally caused his death, the fact that he remained there long enough for decomposition to become obvious is the kind of failure that people are not going to brush off easily.

Brown reported that paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene within minutes of the discovery.

The image is awful, and the setting makes it worse. A police station is supposed to be one of the last places where someone disappears unnoticed for days. In this case, that is exactly what appears to have happened.

Police Say The Cause Of Death Is Still Under Investigation

ABC7’s Marc Brown emphasized that Valencia’s official cause of death has not yet been released. The medical examiner’s investigation is still ongoing, and the department has hired an independent investigator to review the circumstances around the death.

That is an important fact, because until the cause of death is known, the public is left trying to fill in too much of the story on its own.

Ape Huncho notes that authorities have said no significant external trauma was found on Valencia’s body, which rules out at least some of the more immediate theories people might jump to. But that still leaves a long list of unresolved possibilities. If he climbed into the vehicle voluntarily, what prevented him from getting out? If he had his phone, why was there apparently no successful effort to call for help? If his family reported him missing, why was he not located sooner when he was, in the most literal sense, right there?

These are not minor questions.

They go to the heart of whether this was a tragic accident, a failure of procedure, some kind of medical crisis, or something even more troubling. Brown’s report is careful not to overstate what is known, and that caution is appropriate here. The facts are strange enough without speculation being mistaken for proof.

Still, it is hard to escape the conclusion that negligence, at a minimum, will remain part of this case as long as the department continues acknowledging that the vehicle should have been secured.

The Family Wanted Video, But Video Alone Does Not Answer Enough

Brown said Valencia’s family had been demanding to see the body camera footage, and the department’s decision to release it appears to be part of a broader attempt at transparency after public outrage intensified.

That outrage, as Ape Huncho notes, grew quickly once it became known where Valencia had been found. His family reportedly filed a missing person’s report when he failed to return home after release, and they later said they felt their concerns had not been taken seriously. The idea that he was missing while sitting dead in a cruiser outside the station is the kind of fact that destroys public trust almost instantly.

The released footage does offer some clarity. It shows the arrest was not visibly violent. It supports the department’s timeline that Valencia was arrested, held, released, and later entered the car. It also appears to confirm that there was no obvious struggle in the arrest footage or on the discovery footage released so far.

But video has limits.

It can show movement, procedure, and moments in time. It cannot explain intent, thought, panic, confusion, medical collapse, or what was happening inside that vehicle once the doors closed and nobody came back. In cases like this, the public often expects footage to settle everything, when really it usually just narrows the mystery.

That seems to be exactly what happened here.

A Case That Still Feels Impossible To Accept

Marc Brown’s reporting and Ape Huncho’s commentary both circle the same hard truth: this case remains deeply hard to understand.

Eric Valencia was arrested in what looked like a fairly standard DUI stop. He was later released. He then entered the back of an unlocked, out-of-service patrol car outside the Azusa police station. Days passed. A maintenance worker noticed the smell. Valencia was found dead in the back seat.

The department has admitted the car should have been locked. An independent investigator has been brought in. The official cause of death is still pending.

That is where things stand, and it is not enough.

Until the medical examiner’s findings are public and the independent review is completed, this story will remain suspended in that uncomfortable space between explanation and failure. There may eventually be a medical answer, a procedural answer, and a fuller account of why Valencia entered that cruiser in the first place. But even then, the case may never stop feeling surreal.

Because some facts are just too stark to sound real, even when they are.

A man walked out of custody and into what became, for him, a deadly trap parked outside the very building where he had just been released. That is not just strange. It is the kind of institutional breakdown that demands more than a timeline. It demands answers.