Another young, unarmed African American man identified as Diante Yarber was killed this month when police in Barstow fired a Bonnie and Clyde barrage of bullets at the car he was driving. There were several other passagesers—all African American. One 23-year-old female passenger, yet to be identified, was injured after being hit by two stray bullets. The shooting took place in a grocery store parking lot. The Guardian reports.
Police in Barstow, two hours outside of Los Angeles, killed 26-year-old Diante Yarber, who was believed to be unarmed and was driving his cousin and friends to a local Walmart on the morning of 5 April. Police have alleged that Yarber was “wanted for questioning” in a stolen vehicle case and that he “accelerated” the car towards officers when they tried to stop him, but his family and their attorney argued that the young father posed no threat and should not have been treated as a suspect in the first place.
There are conflicting versions of what happened.
Dale Galipo, an attorney representing the 23-year-old woman hit in the car, said the investigation so far has revealed Yarber was unarmed and that officers were not in the path of the vehicle, which means they should never have discharged their weapons, let alone fire a barrage of bullets.
Last month, Stephon Clark, also a young, unarmed black man, was shot dead while standing in his family’s back yard in Northern California. Though Diante Yarber’s death did not made headlines until recently, both killings expose the deadly aggression of police officers in predominantly black communities.
Training and policy dictates that police should not fire at moving vehicles, said Galipo, noting that these kinds of killings are avoidable and particularly dangerous. Last year, undercover police in Hayward, California, attempted to shoot a driver they were trying to arrest and instead killed a 16-year-old girl sitting in the passenger seat.
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It never seems to stop. The brutal police shootings/killing of unarmed men and women of color around the country has become an American epidemic. And some folks still wonder why and how Black Lives Matter came to be.
Thank you to Daily Kos community member Clio2 for bringing attention to the Guardian story while commenting on the thread of an earlier
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