Florida officer fatally shoots homeless black man in front of children
A police officer in Miami, Florida, has fatally shot a homeless African American man who was carrying a metal pipe at a park in front of dozens of adults and children.
Police officer Antonio Torres shot 46-year-old Fritz Severe several times and killed him on Thursday at a park, where as many as 60 people may have witnessed the death, according to the Miami Herald newspaper.
Miami Police Chief Rodolfo Llanes told the newspaper that officers were responding to a call of a "violent disturbance" at the park.
“I understand the anxiety that’s been created across the country from police citizen interactions. I would ask that everybody wait for the facts of the case and not make up your own story,” he said.
Nichelle Miller, a witness to the morning shooting, told reporters that the officer fired around five times.
"The man had a stick in his hand. They could have tasered him. He was a homeless guy who's there every morning," she said.
People who live nearby said Severe was at the park all the time and always carried a metal stick.
“They really didn’t have to shoot that man. What happened to the tasers? Why couldn’t they taser him?” said neighbor Stephanie Severance.
The latest killing comes amid a national outcry over police brutality against African Americans, sparked by high-profile police killings of unarmed black men in cities such as Ferguson, New York, and Baltimore in the past year.
A comprehensive database published by the Guardian newspaper shows that police in the United States kill more Americans in days than police in other countries do in years.
The interactive database, dubbed the Counted, shows that US police killed more people in one month in 2015 than police in Australia officially reported killing during a span of 19 years.
The report indicates that US police officers kill about twice the number of people as reported by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). It has counted 503 deaths at the hands of police so far in 2015.
AHT/HRJ
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