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A series of candlelight vigils will be held across the country this afternoon in reaction to the fatal shooting of George Nkencho by armed Gardaí on Wednesday.
Gatherings are planned for the Spire on Dublin’s O’Connell Street, Galway’s Eyre Square and many other locations around the country starting at 3pm.
The protests are planned to be both static and to comply with social distancing, while the dress code is all black. Several hundred attendees are expected for the Dublin meeting, which was organized after a massive Zoom call involving 500 people from the community on Wednesday night.
Nkencho was shot and killed outside his home near Hartstown, west of Dublin, on Wednesday afternoon following an altercation at a nearby store.
After a two-hour confrontation with armed and unarmed Gardaí, he was fatally shot outside his home in an incident captured on camera by a passerby.
A palpable sense of tension was present in the town on Thursday, with a protest march making its way from Blanchardstown Garda station to Nkencho’s home last night.
Dr. Lucy Michael, a sociologist at Fingal Communities Against Racism, said the feeling was that protests are inevitable given the depth of pain felt in local communities.
“People are very upset about this,” he said.
“Many people when they saw George’s photo realized that they knew him as a child. When you meet someone who has been murdered it is very difficult to process what has happened in your community ”.
“This is a shock, it makes people feel insecure, that their son or daughter, wife or husband or neighbor, may find themselves in a situation they cannot control and end up dead as a result.”
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