A young African-American man was shot in the back by policemen in the US city of Atlanta after resisting arrest after testing positive for blood alcohol. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) said Atlanta Police asked him to investigate the fact, which occurred at a food store. Videos uploaded to social media and disseminated by U.S. media show the moment the young man struggles with two cops on the floor, runs out with a Taser gun in his hand that snatched the cops, who jump to chase him and shoot him three times. Moments later, the man lying on the floor is seen about 50 meters from the place from which the video is filmed.
Other witnesses documented the time the victim is being taken into an ambulance, and a third to a small crowd, most of them African-Americans, protesting against police following the incident from behind a yellow gang that had cordoned off the area. Police said he arrived at the scene, a local of the Wendy’s fast food chain, after receiving a complaint that a man had fallen asleep in his car in line to the window to buy the takeaway without getting out of the vehicle. People could still get to the window and buy the food, but they had to dodge the car on the side, witnesses said.
The man tested positive for blood alcohol and two police officers tried to stop him, but the man resisted and engaged in a struggle, forcing one of the officers to pull out a Taser pistol. “The male suspect has been reported to have been shot by an officer in the fight for the Taser,” the GBI said in a statement. The man was transferred to a local hospital where he died after surgery. The victim was identified as Rayshard Brooks, 27, and from Atlanta. None of the police officers involved were identified. One of them was treated for a wound and discharged from a hospital.
The event came amid the uproin in the country and the world over the death of African-American George Floyd at the hands of a white policeman last month. A white cop who stuck his knee in his neck for several minutes to death. Floyd’s murder sparked some of the biggest racial unrest in the United States in half a century, with demonstrations in dozens of cities that included looting, arson and clashes, as well as anti-racism marches in many other countries.
