Wake held for man who died in custody
Funeral today in Baltimore
BALTIMORE — A night of violence gave way to a day of mourning Sunday for a man who died after sustaining serious injuries while in the custody of Baltimore police.
A small line of mourners filed into the Vaughn Green East funeral home for a wake held for Freddie Gray, the 25-year-old black man who died a week after an encounter with police left him with grave spinal injuries. Mourners passed by Gray’s silk-draped, white coffin. He lay dressed in a white shirt, black pants, white sneakers and Los Angeles Dodgers white baseball cap.
Mourners also gathered outside. Some held up signs that read, “We remember Freddie” and “Our hearts are with the Gray family.”
Tina Covington, 46, did not know Gray but came to express her condolences to his family. She has a son near Gray’s age. “It hits home. It really does. It’s a reality check,” she said. “There is something going on in the police department that needs to change.”
Gray’s funeral is planned for today.
At a church service earlier Sunday, Pastor Jamal Bryant told the congregation at Empowerment Temple AME Church that “somebody is going to have to pay” for Gray’s death.
Bryant told churchgoers, almost all of them black, that if “you’re black in America your life is always under threat.”
Bryant also addressed the violence that erupted Saturday night during what began as a peaceful demonstration attended by more than a thousand people.
Some 34 people were arrested, according to Baltimore Police Department, and six police officers sustained minori njuries. After services were over, Bryant, whose church will pay for Gray’s funeral, met with the family. He said after the meeting that they are “holding on” and that they don’t want violence.
Bryant said marches and demonstrations would continue but that “violence never leads to justice.”
Roughly 1,200 protesters gathered at City Hall on Saturday afternoon, officials said, to protest Gray’s death, which has prompted near-daily demonstrations since he died April 19. Gray was arrested one week before that when officers chased him through a West Baltimore neighborhood and dragged him into a police van.