LOS ANGELES — America’s second-largest city is set to experience protests as a video emerged that captures police shooting a young on a bicycle. The shooting escalates the nationwide protests again extra judicial killings of black people in USA.
Sheriff’s deputies fatally shot a Black man in a confrontation that followed their attempt to stop him over what they called an unspecified “code violation” as he rode his bicycle on Monday afternoon through an unincorporated section of south Los Angeles.
But unlike Minneapolis, in which an officer kept a knee to Floyd’s neck until he became unconscious and died, or Kenosha, Wisconsin, where an officer shot Blake seven times in the back that has left him paralyzed, video capturing the death of Dijon Kizzee isn’t as clear.
The case, however, immediately attracted the attention of the Los Angeles chapter of Black Lives Matters, which organized protests, and of attorney Ben Crump, who has been active in both the Floyd and Blake cases.
At a Wednesday news conference, Crump and two other attorneys said they will be representing Kizzee’s family in civil claims against the sheriff’s department.
“Dijon Kizzee did not deserve to be executed like this in cold blood as he was running away,” Crump said. “That seems to happen disproportionately to Black and Brown people in America.”
Kizzee’s only crime, Crump said, was to be a Black person riding a bicycle.
However the sheriff’s department said in a statement that Kizzee had abandoned the bike and fled on foot when he saw a sheriff’s cruiser make a U-turn and head toward him.
At first, Kizzee eluded them. But when they encountered him a few blocks away and confronted them, the department says Kizzee punched a deputy in the face. Then a black semi-automatic handgun fell to the ground when Kizzee dropped his jacket. Thinking he was reaching for the gun, deputies opened fire, according to the statement.
