Demands for justice at funeral of Black man shot by US police

Anger and requiring justice ruled the funeral in Michigan on Friday of a Black guy shot by way of a policeman, with US civil rights chief Al Sharpton worrying the officer be publicly recognized.

Sharpton compared Michigan in 2022 to “Mississipi in 1952” as he issued a rallying cry for 26-yr-old Patrick Lyoya, who was killed during a traffic stop inside the town of Grand Rapids on April 4.

“This cannot quit nowadays… We were given to combat for him,” he advised the church full of hundreds of mourners, consisting of Lyoya’s own family and the households of different Black victims of police violence.

Police have released four videos from the incident, one of which shows the officer lying on top of Lyoya as the two scuffled, and then appearing to shoot him in the head.

Prior to the shooting, the men appear to be wrestling on the ground for control of the officer’s taser.

The officer is on paid leave while state police investigate whether to bring charges, authorities have said.

“We want his name,” Sharpton said, continuing that the failure to disclose it was adding “insult to injury.”

At the ceremony, which was broadcast live, Lyoya’s casket rested at the front of the church, draped in the flag of the Democratic Republic of Congo. His family emigrated from there in 2014.

His mother Dorcas rocked gently and wept during a sermon punctuated by gospel singers and music, as well as cheers and standing ovations for some of the speakers.

The family’s lawyer Ben Crump, who has taken a leading national role in advocating for Black victims of police violence, also spoke, repeating his earlier claim that the killing was an “execution” and called for reform.

Lyoya’s killing was the latest in a grim litany of Black people dying at the hands of police in the United States that has ignited widespread protests against racism and demands for reform.

The push for trade drew acute country wide interest specially after a white Minneapolis police officer kneeled at the neck of George Floyd till he died in May 2020.

Floyd’s dying, which changed into filmed by a bystander in a video that went viral, sparked months of protests against racial injustice and police brutality within the United States and around the sector.