After demonstrations over the shooting death of Alton Sterling roiled Baton Rouge, leading to violent clashes between protesters and law enforcement and prompting almost 200 arrests, the local district attorney said he would not prosecute more than half of those who were detained. But they used deadly force after Sterling reached for a gun in his trousers pocket, it said.
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“We have got to stop going from funeral to funeral, and America needs to deal when wrong is wrong, and whoever does the wrong needs to pay the price for doing wrong”, he said.
Carl Slaughter, a Baton Rouge resident who has run a community center for 35 years, remembered Sterling as a teenager who spent many hours there after the death of his parents.
Sterling’s caught-on-video death along with the fatal police shooting of Philando Castile in Minnesota a day later ignited widespread outrage and protests over the treatment of blacks by police. Moore said his office is reviewing the rest of the arrests, which include allegations such as resisting arrest, carrying guns or some “act of violence”.
“If you want to protest please leave now”, he told the crowd, which included two senior advisers to President Barack Obama.
Bridgewater didn’t enter a plea Friday to a firearms theft charge. They had already arrested three other people – an unnamed 13-year old, Antonio Thomas, 17 and Malik Bridgewater, 20.
The owner of the store, Abdullah Muflahi’s, witnessed the shooting and said he believes the cops “murdered” Sterling.
During Sterling’s funeral, Muflahi recalled Sterling, 37 and the father of five, as a good friend and constant presence outside of the Triple S.
The campus resides just a few miles from where Sterling lost his life, after being shot at point-range by said law enforcement officials from the Baton Rouge Police Department, after being pinned to the ground outside the Triple S convenience store.
Bridgewater told investigators his motivation was to sell stolen items for cash, an agent from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives wrote in an affidavit filed Thursday in federal court. “It’s sad to know we’re going to have an empty place in front of the store”. The American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana and other groups filed a lawsuit this week over the treatment of protesters by police.
A public viewing was scheduled between 8 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. CDT at Southern University in Baton Rouge followed later in the day by a funeral service. Although Alton’s death has resulted in a number of protests across the country calling for justice, Sterling family spokesperson Gary Chambers made it clear that demonstrations would not be welcome at his funeral service.
Sterling’s death was recorded on cellphone video and shared across the internet.
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Jackson referenced the shooting of five white police officers in Dallas last week by Micah Johnson and said the lone black gunman didn’t represent the views of the Black Lives Matter movement.
