Unarmed US man was ‘shot in back’

SACRAMENTO: About 200 demonstrators squared off with police on Friday night in California’s capital, and more protests were planned for yesterday, after an autopsy on Stephon Clark contradicted the police account of the shooting of the unarmed black man.

Waving signs and chanting the 22-year-old’s name in unison, protesters, some with black masks covering their faces, shouted: “Shoot us down, we shut you down,” and swore at the police.

Clark’s death was the most recent in a string of fatal shootings of black men by police that have triggered protests across the US and fuelled debate about bias in the American criminal justice system.

The father of two was gunned down in the backyard of his grandparents’ house by police responding to a report someone was breaking windows. Police said the officers who shot at Clark 20 times feared he was holding a firearm but that he was later found to have been holding a cellphone. Police have said he was moving towards officers in a menacing way when they fired. The incident was captured on a body cam video released by police.

The latest round of protest were touched off by a new private autopsy on Clark that showed none of the eight bullets hit him in the front, contradicting the police version of events, a lawyer for his family said on Friday. Clark was hit six times in the back, once in the side and once in the leg, the autopsy found.

Attorney Benjamin Crump, said: “This independent autopsy affirms Stephon was not a threat to police and was slain in another senseless police killing under increasingly questionable circumstances.”

Police would not comment until after the release of the findings of an official autopsy and a review by state and local prosecutors. – Reuters