Washington (Dispatches) - In Grand Rapids, Mich., demonstrators gathered again to protest a white police officer’s killing of a Black resident during a traffic stop.
The shooting happened 10 days ago, but police just released video footage of the shooting. Twenty-six-year-old Patrick Lyoya was a refugee who fled violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo with his family.
Today, they spoke out against the shooting, calling for the officer’s arrest.
The family of an African refugee killed by a Michigan police officer during a traffic stop demanded on Thursday that authorities dismiss the officer from the force and file criminal charges against him, a day after a video of the fatal shooting was released.
Dustin Dwyer of Michigan Radio has this report. And just a warning - it contains audio from the moments before Lyoya’s death.
The family of an African refugee killed by a Michigan police officer during a traffic stop demanded on Thursday that authorities dismiss the officer from the force and file criminal charges against him, a day after a video of the fatal shooting was released.
The family is calling the killing an execution, and they want criminal charges to be filed. In the videos of the shooting released by Grand Rapids police, you see Lyoya get out of his car after being pulled over by a police officer for an incorrect license plate. Lyoya stands outside his vehicle, looking confused.
Patrick Lyoya, a 26-year-old Congolese refugee who is Black, was killed in a Grand Rapids neighborhood during a routine traffic stop after he struggled with the officer over a stun gun. The officer has not been publicly identified.
During Thursday’s news conference, prominent U.S. civil rights lawyer Ben Crump said the videos showed an “unnecessary, unjustifiable, and excessive use of fatal force. You see a police officer escalate a minor traffic stop into a deadly execution.”
There was no reason for the officer to shoot Lyoya, said Crump, adding that the family is calling on authorities to charge the officer “to the full extent of the law for killing their son, for breaking their hearts, for making his young children orphans”.
Grand Rapids police officials have placed the officer involved in the shooting, who has not been named publicly, on administrative leave and have asked the Michigan State Police to investigate.