(Washington) The parents of a black man killed by a police officer in Grand Rapids, Michigan (northern United States), said on Thursday that they had fled the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo to finally discover a “genocide” in the United States, and called for legal action against the police officer involved.
Posted at 4:40 p.m.
Patrick Lyoya, 26, was killed during a traffic stop in Grand Rapids on April 4, the latest tragedy in a long list of black people killed by police in the United States.
The police released four videos of the event, and one of them shows the policeman lying on the back of Patrick Lyoya, before he shot him, in all likelihood, in the head.
Lawyers for Patrick Lyoya’s family have likened his death to the executions of Ukrainian civilians killed by Russian soldiers, saying they did not want preferential treatment, only “fair justice”.
During a press conference, lawyer Ben Crump, who has already defended several families of black people killed by the police, said that the family of Patrick Lyoya wanted the policeman, whose name has not been revealed , be identified, sacked, and prosecuted.
The officer in question has been placed on paid leave pending the results of the Michigan State Police investigation, Grand Rapids Police Chief Eric Winstrom said Wednesday.
Patrick Lyoya’s mother described how she thought she had come “to a safe country”, after the family emigrated from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
“Now my son has been shot,” said Dorcas Lyoya with tears in his eyes, while the father, Peter, spoke of “genocide” in the United States. The two spoke through an interpreter.
An altercation between Patrick Lyoya and the policeman had broken out after a traffic stop, and shortly before the shooting, the two men appeared to be struggling on the ground to take control of the policeman’s electric gun.
American society has been rocked in recent years by the deaths of black men killed by police, particularly after a white police officer in Minneapolis knelt on the neck of African American George Floyd in 2020.
The images of the death of George Floyd, in the street face against the ground, and after he had repeatedly repeated that he could no longer breathe, had shocked the whole world.
His name had thus become, alongside others, an emblem of the Black Lives Matter movement during the major anti-racist demonstrations of 2020.