Pascal Arogorn Ibe
The killing of an unarmed African-American man by police in the US city of Columbus, Ohio sparked a fresh wave of outrage this week against racial injustice and police brutality in the country.
Andre Maurice Hill, 47, was in the garage of a house on Monday night when he was shot several times by a police officer who had been called to the scene for a minor incident.
Bodycam footage shows Hill walking towards the policeman holding a cell phone in his left hand, while his other hand cannot be seen.
Seconds later, the officer fired and Hill collapsed.
The footage has no sound and it is not clear why the officer, Adam Coy, fired. Hill was not carrying a weapon.
Coy and his colleague waited several minutes before approaching the victim, who was still alive, but died later.
According to local media reports, Coy had previously received complaints of excessive force.
A wake will be held Thursday in memory of Hill, the second African-American killed by police in Columbus in less than three weeks.
Casey Goodson Jr, 23, was shot several times on December 4 while returning home. His family say he was holding a sandwich in his hand which law enforcement mistook for a gun.
The killings come after a summer in which the US was rocked by historic protests against racial injustice and police brutality, sparked by the May killing of African American man George Floyd.
Floyd, also unarmed, suffocated beneath the knee of a white police officer in Minneapolis. Horrified passers-by filmed his death, with the footage swiftly going viral.
“Once again officers see a Black man and conclude that he’s criminal and dangerous,” said lawyer Ben Crump, who defends several families of victims including Floyd’s, on Wednesday.
He denounced a “tragic succession of officer-involved shootings.”
Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther said he was “outraged” by Hill’s death.
He “known to the residents of the home where his car was parked on the street,” he said Wednesday at a press conference, describing him as a “guest… not an intruder.”
Ginther said he was “very disturbed” by the fact that the two police officers present did not give first aid to Hill. He called for the “immediate termination” of Coy.
AFP
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