Violent police again. In America still in shock from the video of the killing of Tire Nichols, beaten to death by five agents now indicted for second-degree murder, news arrives from California that the police shot and killed an African American in a wheelchair.
“The way they killed my legless son, they murdered him in a wheelchair,” said the mother of Anthony Lowe, 36, who was shot dead by department officers in Huntington Park, south Los Angeles, who had attempted to apprehend him in connection with a serious stabbing.
Videos recorded by passers-by are circulating on social media, showing how the agents opened fire while the man, who fell from his wheelchair, was trying to get away on the ground. From the images we see the man running away as he can and every now and then he turns around threatening the agents, a few meters away, with a knife and then resumes his impossible escape.
“I am heartbroken and filled with rage,” sister Tatiana Jackson told the Guardian. “I don’t understand why they did this to a man in a wheelchair, they have to explain to me why to use a gun on a man who has no legs,” she added.
According to The Reconstruction Provided by The Police
According to the reconstruction provided by the police, the agents had intervened to rescue a person who had been stabbed by a person in a wheelchair. Identified a short distance from the site of the attack, Lowe was ordered by the police to stop, but he ignored the order “threatening to advance or throw the knife at the officers” who, according to the police, also attempted to shoot before shooting to use the Taser.
At first there was talk of 8 gunshots, but the man turns out to have been hit by 10 bullets. The will to kill and not to neutralize is evident, assuming that one could speak of a real danger for the five policemen in the face of a person with no legs and no firearm.
Now, the sheriff’s department is investigating Lowe’s death last Thursday, but the family of the disabled man is asking the Los Angeles County District Attorney to charge the police officers involved. And he completely disputes the reconstruction of the facts provided by the police, waiting for the results of the autopsy to tell “the truth” about Anthony’s death.
“There can be no justification for Anthony’s murder, and we stand with his family and his community to get justice for Anthony,” said Cliff Smith, campaigner for the ‘Police Control’ coalition. Lowe lost his legs in an accident about a year ago and was “battling depression,” Ebonique Simon, mother of one of the man’s children, told CNN.
The District Attorney’s Office ensures that an independent review of the case will be conducted after the sheriff’s department concludes the investigation. “We know the African-American community in Los Angeles is looking for answers, and we know that nothing will heal the trauma they are experiencing right now,” the spokeswoman added.
This article is originally published on msn.com
