[ad_1]
(Reuters) – A black bicyclist was shot and killed by Los Angeles County police, the latest case in which police killed a black man, as the county Sheriff’s Department and an attorney representing the family The man was given divergent accounts of the shooting Tuesday.
The cyclist, Dijon Kizzee, 29, was shot more than 20 times in the back after two sheriff’s deputies tried to arrest him for a bicycle code violation, said Benjamin Crump, who said he represents Kizzee’s family.
The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department said Kizzee, whose identity was confirmed by the county medical examiner, was shot fewer than 20 times.
The murder renewed protests in the city by protesters angered by the deadly violence against blacks by police departments across the country.
Kizzee was riding his bike Monday afternoon in Los Angeles County’s Westmont neighborhood when two sheriff’s deputies who had been driving tried to stop him.
Kizzee abandoned his bike and ran for a block with officers in pursuit, Brandon Dean, a spokesman for the sheriff’s department, told reporters Monday night. Kizzee then hit one of the officers in the face, dropping a package of clothing that he had been carrying, the department said.
Officers said there was a semi-automatic pistol in the package that had been dropped, and both began firing at Kizzee, the department said.
Dean said he didn’t know what part of the bike code Kizzee was suspected of violating or how many times officers shot him, other than saying there were fewer than 20. His office declined to answer questions about the shooting and the status of the two deputies. on Tuesday.
The county coroner was due to perform an autopsy on Kizzee on Tuesday.
However, Crump, a civil rights attorney known for representing black victims of police violence across the country, in a Twitter post, said: “They say he ran, dropped the clothes and the gun. He didn’t pick it up. But the cops shot him in the back more than 20 times and then I left him for hours. ”
Crump asked on Twitter for people to send him videos of the incident, saying that sheriff’s deputies are not required to use body cameras.
Angry protesters confronted officers in front of the sheriff’s department building Monday night, and a march was planned for Tuesday from the scene of the shooting to the department building.
(Reporting by Jonathan Allen in New York; Additional reporting by Heather Timmons in Washington; Editing by Leslie Adler)
[ad_2]
