A white police officer in Grand Rapids (Michigan, USA) killed an unarmed black man with a shot in the head after a struggle over a traffic stop, according to videos released by authorities in recent hours and collected by local media.
The incident occurred on 4 April, when an officer stopped the vehicle in which Patrick Lyoya, a 26-year-old refugee from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, was traveling.
After getting out of the car, the two began to argue, Lyoya ran out and both struggled on the ground over the control of a laser gun that is designed to give electric shocks and immobilize the recipient.
At one point during the struggle, the policeman placed Lyoya's knee on Lyoya's back and shot him in the back of the head.
The Grand Rapids Police released on Wednesday the four videos showing what happened and which include images recorded by the cameras that police officers wear on their uniforms, as well as the video recorded by a person traveling in Lyoya's vehicle.
One of the four videos shot on April 4 shows a police officer lying on Patrick Lyoya's back before shooting him in the head.
Shortly before the shot, the agent and Lyoya are seen struggling on the ground to gain control of the agent's gun.
The police have not identified the officer involved, who is on low pay while the investigation is taking place.
Well-known civil rights lawyer Ben Crump, who represents Lyoya's family, has demanded that the policeman be fired and investigated through criminal proceedings.
“This video clearly shows that this was an unnecessary, excessive use of force and that it had a fatal end for an unarmed black man who was confused by the encounter and terrified by his life,” Crump said in a statement.
At the time of the traffic stop, the agent asked Lyoya if she spoke English and asked for her driver's license, at which point the discussion began.
Lyoya, who had two daughters, was a refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo and had arrived in the United States with her family in 2014, fleeing violence in her home country, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer explained in a statement.
“He came to the United States as a refugee with his family fleeing violence. I had my whole life ahead of me,” Whitmer said.
The city of Grand Rapids, about 230 kilometers from Detroit, has about 200,000 inhabitants, of whom 18% are African-American, according to data from the latest census.
After the images were made public, hundreds of people demonstrated in front of the Grand Rapids Police Department.
According to footage from local broadcaster ABC, several dozen protesters had gathered in downtown Grand Rapids, carrying “Black Lives Matter” signs and chanting “there is no justice, there is no peace”.
“I consider it a tragedy,” Grand Rapids Police Chief Eric Winstrom said of the April 4 event at Wednesday's press conference where the videos were broadcast.
“The loss of a life, regardless of the circumstances, is sad, and I know it will have an impact on our city,” he added.
In the summer of 2020, the United States experienced the biggest protests against racism since the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr in the late 1960s.
Those demonstrations were a reaction to the May 2020 murder in Minneapolis, Minnesota, of African-American George Floyd, suffocated by a white policeman.
(With information from EFE)
Keep reading: