8/30/14
Marlon Horton was unarmed when he was shot and killed during a confrontation with an off-duty Chicago police officer last year. And a recently released video recording of the incident has reignited the family’s call for justice, according to Fox Chicago News television.
The recording was released in the aftermath of two other high-profile deaths of unarmed black men in encounters with police: Eric Garner on New York City’s Staten Island and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. Both deaths sparked angry demonstrations across the nation, including days of police squaring off with protesters in Ferguson.
Unlike in the deaths of Garner and Brown, officers involved in Horton’s case are not white. Still, Fox News says more than 600 people have commented on the video, which gave Horton’s girlfriend the first look at “what she called the devastating last minutes of” Horton’s life, the report says.
“My stomach started churning, I looked at it and then I was like no, it’s kinda like surreal,” Rhonda Day, who lived with Horton, told Fox Chicago News.
The incident occurred Sat., Sept. 7, 2013, outside a Chicago Housing Authority housing project on the city’s near West Side, the report says. Horton had arrived there early to meet Day, who had spent the night at her mother’s apartment, Fox Chicago News reports.
Because Horton’s cellphone battery had died, he was unable to call Day to let her know he was outside. And two guards, including an off-duty Chicago cop, would not let him enter the building, Fox News writes. A confrontation ensued, shots were fired and Horton ended up dead.
“Had they asked why you over here, who you looking for, and he would have said me and she’s upstairs and if you not letting me in could you go up there. No, they could have just done the whole thing different in my opinion,” Day said, according to the television channel.
The family, which has filed a civil rights lawsuit against the city and the officer who shot Horton, is awaiting the findings of an investigation by the Independent Police Review Authority, the TV channel reports. Last year after the shooting, a police spokesman said the officer had fired in fear for his life, the report says.
“It’s hard to see him in a situation where he didn’t have to die,” Horton’s brother, Gerard, told the news station. “I feel like they just murdered him.”
Source: https://www.theroot.com/watch-fatal-shooting-by-off-duty-chicago-cop-sparks-ca-1790876890