Unrest in the American city of Atlanta. A fast food restaurant went up in flames last night and protesters blocked a highway. They are furious about the death of Rayshard Brooks (27). The black man was shot dead by an officer last Friday. Multiple cameras recorded the incident.
That night, Rayshard Brooks fell asleep in the drive-in of fast food restaurant Wendy’s. Agents receive a complaint about this and start a conversation with him. They suspect that he has too much alcohol and let him do a breath test. Brooks tests positive.
If the officers then want to arrest him for drunk driving, things go wrong. Brooks resists when the officers handcuff him. He grabs the electric shock weapon from one of the officers and runs away. When he points the taser at one of the officers, those three shots are fired.
Emergency services take Brooks to the hospital where he dies later that night. The local police chief drew her conclusions less than a day later and left. Garrett Rolfe, the officer who released the fatal shots, has been fired.
But those actions don’t allay the outrage at the incident. Protesters rip off a major highway in anger. The restaurant where the incident took place goes up in flames.
Fire at Wendy's on University Ave in southwest Atlanta raging. A night to remember in Atlanta: Rayshard Brooks shot by an officer, the chief of Atlanta police resigned, and protesters stormed the interstate. Now, fire. #AtlantaShooting #AtlantaProtest pic.twitter.com/Fgjq7jhDiZ
— Ric Garni (@RICGARNI) June 14, 2020
Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms is critical of police action. “There was no justified violence,” Bottoms said at a news conference yesterday.
The lawyers want the agent charged. He would have used unnecessary deadly force. That Brooks himself threatened with a taser, according to lawyer Chris Stewart, does not justify the shooting.
“As a police, you cannot claim that a taser is a non-lethal weapon, but when a black American runs away with it and points the taser at you, it suddenly becomes a lethal weapon that you must respond with bullets,” Stewart said during a news conference after the fatal incident.
Brooks, 27, leaves behind three daughters and a stepson. According to the lawyers of the next of kin, his eldest daughter held a birthday party yesterday. A day after the death of her father.
