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The fatal shooting of a black man by police in Columbus, Ohio, the second such murder in the US city this month, sparked a new wave of protests on Christmas Eve against racial injustice and brutality. police.
Andre Maurice Hill, 47, was in the garage of a home Monday night when a police officer who had been called to the scene for a minor incident shot him multiple times.
Seconds before the shooting, body camera footage shows Mr. Hill walking towards the police officer holding a mobile phone in his left hand, while his other hand cannot be seen.
Columbus Police Chief Thomas Quinlan announced yesterday that he was firing the officer, Adam Coy, on charges of “critical misconduct.”
“We have an officer who violated his oath to abide by the rules and policies of the Columbus Police Division,” Chief Quinlan said in a statement. “This rape cost the life of an innocent man.”
According to local media reports, Officer Coy had previously received complaints of the use of excessive force.
He and his colleague waited several minutes before approaching Mr. Hill, who was still alive, but later died.
Hill, the second African-American killed by police in Columbus in less than three weeks, was not carrying a weapon.
Casey Goodson Jr, 23, was shot multiple times on December 4 as he was returning home. His family have said he was holding a sandwich that authorities mistook for a weapon.
Several dozen protesters gathered yesterday, waving Black Lives Matter signs and calling for justice for those killed in police shootings.
The murders in Columbus come after a summer in which the United States was rocked by historic protests against racial injustice and police brutality, sparked by the May murder of African American George Floyd.
Mr. Floyd, also unarmed, suffocated under the knee of a white police officer in Minneapolis.
“Once again, officers see a black man and conclude that he is a criminal and dangerous,” attorney Ben Crump, who defends several families of victims of police brutality, said Wednesday, including Floyd’s.
He denounced a “tragic succession of shootings involving officers.”
Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther said he was “outraged” by Hill’s death.
He was “known to residents of the house where his car was parked on the street,” she said at a news conference Wednesday, describing him as a “guest … not an intruder.”
Mr. Ginther said he was “very concerned” that the two officers failed to give Mr. Hill first aid and called for the “immediate dismissal” of Officer Coy.
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