“They gunned him down like a dog,” Stevante Clark said of the police shooting of his brother, Stephon. “They executed him.”
Stevante was in the backseat of a car, his voice quivering. He stomped his feet 20 times – one for each bullet that police fired at his unarmed brother.
“Twenty times. That’s like stepping on a roach … And then stepping, stepping, stepping, stepping, stepping, stepping, stepping.”
The fatal shooting of Stephon Clark on 18 March by Sacramento police has sparked outrage and massive protests in the California capital, drawing comparisons with other cases of law enforcement killing unarmed black people, such as Oscar Grant, Michael Brown and Eric Garner.
Stephon, an unarmed 22-year-old father of two, was standing in his grandmother’s backyard, holding only his iPhone when officers, who did not announce they were police, appeared in the dark, shouted at him to reveal his hands and quickly fired a round of bullets at him before he could respond.
His brother, Stevante, 25, has been thrust into the national spotlight and forced to navigate media, protests, lawyers and donations while struggling through his own grief and anger.
“I shouldn’t have to defend my brother. They should be proving their innocence,” Stevante told the Guardian on Sunday night, during an interview in his friend’s car. “I’m exhausted. I hate this. I hate my life.”
At a time when debates about gun laws are dominating the news – surrounding the March for Our Lives rallies organized by Florida students – the killing by California police has served as a harsh reminder that law enforcement fatally shoot hundreds of Americans each year, many more than those who die in mass shootings.
For more read the full of article at The Guardian
