LOS ANGELES – A black cyclist was shot dead through Los Angeles County Police, the most recent case in which police killed a black man, while the county sheriff’s branch and a lawyer representing the man’s family circle gave different versions of the shooting Tuesday.
The cyclist, Dijon Kizzee, 29, was shot more than 20 times in the back on Monday afternoon after two sheriff’s officers tried to arrest him for violating the motorcycle code, said Benjamin Crump, who said he represented Kizzee’s family.
The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department said Kizzee, whose identity was shown through the county medical examiner, fired less than 20 times after dropping a gun he was carrying and beating one of the agents.
The murder resumed protests in the city of protesters angered by the fatal violence against blacks via the police. Such protests have turned almost daily across the country after George Floyd, a black man, was assassinated by a white Minneapolis police officer in May.
“You don’t kill any race, and that doesn’t make sense,” Dijon Kizzee’s aunt Fletcher Fair told reporters Tuesday at the scene of the shooting, where activists called for an independent investigation through the California attorney general.
The protests also continued in Kenosha, Wisconsin, over the shooting through a white police officer of Jacob Blake, a black man, seven times in the back, leaving him paralyzed, and the riots were a major challenge before the November presidential election.
President Donald Trump, a Republican, arrived in Kenosha on Tuesday as he sought to rally his base of white supporters protecting police from allegations of brutality.
Kizzee was driving his motorcycle Monday afternoon in the Westmont community in Los Angeles County when two passing sheriff’s officers tried to stop it.
Kizzee abandoned his motorcycle and raced for a block with the officers chasing him, Brandon Dean, a spokesman for the sheriff’s branch, told reporters Monday night.Kizzee then punched one of the agents in the face and dropped a pack of clothes he was wearing, the branch said.
Officers said there was a semi-automatic pistol in the package and they started shooting Kizzee, the branch said.
Dean said he did not know which component of Kizzee’s bike code was suspected of having raped or how many times he was shot, other than saying less than 20.His workplace refused to answer questions about the shooting and the prestige of the two officers on Tuesday.
#DijonKizzee, a 29-year-old black man, shot dead through @LASDHQ agents.Police arrested him while driving his motorcycle for an alleged “traffic code violation.”They say he ran, dropped clothes and a pistola.no spotted him, however, the cops shot him in the back more than 20 times and then left him for hours.pic.twitter.com/CF1hVihywv
The county medical examiner was scheduled to perform an autopsy in Kizzee on Tuesday.
However, Crump, a civil rights lawyer known for representing black victims of police violence across the country, wrote in a Twitter message: “They say he ran, dropped clothes and a gun.He didn’t pick it up, but the police fired him in the back more than 20 times and then left it for hours.”
Crump asked others on Twitter to send him videos of the incident, saying the sheriff’s deputies are not required to use frame cameras.
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