Protesting killing of yet another Black man by police in the United States
Akron, July 16 (RHC)-- A Black man killed by police in a hail of bullets in the United States late last month was shot 46 times, the local medical examiner has said after a preliminary autopsy, as calls for accountability for the killing of Jayland Walker mount.
In a news conference on Friday morning, Dr Lisa Kohler, the Summit County, Ohio medical examiner, said Walker died as a result of blood loss caused by his internal injuries. She counted 41 entry wounds and five wounds from bullets that grazed him.
“We are not able to say which bullet killed him. He had several very devastating injuries,” Kohler told reporters. Walker’s killing in Akron, Ohio, a city of approximately 200,000 residents in the U.S. Midwest, set off protests and renewed demands for an end to deadly police violence against Black people across the country.
The 25-year-old was killed on June 27th after Akron police officers tried to pull him over for a minor traffic violation and he fled. After a chase of several minutes, Walker jumped out of the car and ran from the officers, a video released by police showed. Police said it appears he was turning toward officers, who at the time believed he was armed. A gun was later recovered from his car, they said.
Ken Abbarno, a lawyer representing Walker’s family, said the medical examiner’s findings confirm the fact that Walker, who was unarmed, “came to a brutal, senseless death.”
Friday’s news conference came a day after the NAACP, a prominent US civil rights group, made a direct plea to Attorney General Merrick Garland for the US Justice Department to open a federal civil rights investigation into the killing.
“This wasn’t self-defense, it wasn’t an accident in the heat of the moment, it was murder. Point blank,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in a statement on July 1st.
The officers involved are on paid leave while the state investigates the shooting. The local police union has said the officers thought there was an immediate threat of serious harm and that it believes their actions and the number of shots will be found justified in line with their training and protocols.
U.S. President Joe Biden said earlier this month that federal authorities were “closely monitoring” the case. “If the evidence reveals potential violations of federal criminal statutes, the Justice Department will take the appropriate action,” Biden said.
Hundreds of mourners attended Walker’s funeral on Wednesday in Akron, U.S. media reported. The city council also declared July 13th to be “a city-wide day of mourning for Jayland Walker.”
“We must not normalise this,” Bishop Timothy Clarke, pastor of the First Church of God in Columbus, said during the funeral service, as reported by CNN. “We cannot make the deaths of our sons and daughters at such an early age the normal thing … We must not try to act as if this is all right. This is not all right. There’s nothing right about this. We should not be here. And Jayland should not be in that box,” Clarke told the mourners.
