Protesters demand justice for black teenager shot dead by police in Texas
People have taken to the streets in the US city of Arlington, Texas, to demand justice for unarmed black teenager Christian Taylor, who was shot dead by a white police officer last week.
The protesters gathered outside the Arlington police headquarters on Tuesday night and called for the prosecution of Officer Brad Miller.
Protesters’ signs said, “Stop target practice” and “Black lives matter.”
“We are here to honor the memory of Christian Taylor, to help the family through their grief and to protest the ongoing disgrace of police brutality,” said John Fullinwider, a founder of Mothers Against Police Brutality.
Taylor, 19-year-old college football player, was shot dead during a suspected burglary at a Texas car dealership on Friday.
Officer Miller, 49, was fired Tuesday for making mistakes that put him and other officers in danger.
The firing was "not enough justice," said Matthew Higgins, 20, one of Taylor's former high school classmates. "If it was a white person, it probably would have been different.”
The shooting occurred when Miller was called to the scene of a suspected burglary early Friday morning. He pursued Taylor through the broken glass doors of a car dealership showroom without telling his supervising officer, said Police Chief Will Johnson.
Instead of helping to set up a perimeter around the showroom, Miller confronted Taylor and ordered him to get down on the ground, Johnson said.
"This is an extraordinarily difficult case," Johnson said. "Decisions were made that created an environment of cascading consequences and an unrecoverable outcome."
Johnson said he had "serious concerns" about Miller's use of deadly force, but it would be up to a grand jury to decide whether Miller's actions were criminal.
The killing of several unarmed black men by white police officers and decisions by grand juries not to indict the officers triggered large-scale protests across the United States.
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