Autopsy on black man contradicts police: Lawyer
An autopsy on an unarmed African-American man shot dead by police in the capital of California last week contradicts the official version of events.
The autopsy shows that all eight bullets hit Stephon Clark in the back, side or leg, Benjamin Crump, an attorney for the victim’s family, said Friday.
The findings also refuted statements by police that Clark, 22, had been moving toward officers when they fired on March 18.
“This independent autopsy affirms that Stephon was not a threat to police and was slain in another senseless police killing under increasingly questionable circumstances,” Crump said in a statement.
A forensic pathologist also said that none of the bullets fired by the officers entered Clark’s body from the front.
According to Bennet Omalu, the forensic pathologist who conducted the autopsy, any one of seven bullets that entered the upper half of Clark’s body could have led to his death. An eighth bullet hit him in the leg.
“Each of these bullets independently possessed a fatal capacity, meaning ... all he needed was one of the seven to die,” said Omalu at a briefing.
A police statement released after the incident, however, claimed that the officers involved “saw the suspect facing them, advance forward with his arms extended, and holding an object in his hands.”
The incident was captured in a body cam video released by the police on Wednesday.
Hundreds of people attended Clark’s funeral in Sacramento on Thursday, which turned into a rallying cry for justice in the face of police violence against African-Americans.
Civil rights activist Al Sharpton delivered an angry, rousing speech at the occasion.
Sharpton noted that White House spokesperson Sarah Sanders, when asked by reporters on Wednesday why President Donald Trump had not addressed the incident, had called his killing a "local matter."
"This is not a local matter," Sharpton shouted. "They have been killing young black men all over the country, and we are here to say that we are going to stand with Stephon Clark and his family."
The incident follows a string of controversial cases involving fatal police shootings of black Americans.
An uproar following the incident erupted into days of protest in the streets of downtown Sacramento.
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