Killing shows this is not the America I pray for

As a driver during 63 years, I have been stopped rarely for minor traffic or tail light violations. After showing my license, my errors were politely explained along with advice on how to improve my driving. Sometimes I had forgotten my driver’s license and had to go to traffic court. I have paid my fines, and after age 50, taken excellent senior driver education classes to make me a safer driver.

I wish this good treatment would be extended to all drivers regardless of race, color, sexuality, age, ethnicity, physical handicaps or English-speaking ability.

I am forever outraged and saddened by the treatment of Tyre Nichols, a Black Fedex driver, loving father of a fouryear-old son and member of a close-knit family. In addition, I have seen videos of his amazing ability at skateboarding acrobatics.

The various TV news stations showed videos of the stop by five elite “Scorpion” police officers, to whom he showed his driver’s license and asked, “What did I do?” Rather than answer that reasonable question, they cursed him, yanked open the door of his vehicle, roughly forced him to the ground, handcuffed him and proceeded to repeatedly tear gas, beat, punch and kick him as he cried out for his mom. When he managed briefly to run away, they quickly caught up with him and beat him unconscious.

Ambulance personnel waited a long time to take him to the hospital, where he died 3 days later.

I have viewed this horror over and over, unable to make any sense out of it. The Black community, joined by diverse concerned citizens demonstrated against this monstrous miscarriage of justice, as they have for so many decades for so many of our brothers and sisters of color, whose legacies will be forever carried on.

This is not the America I pray I can someday believe in.

— Deborah Stucklen, Loveland