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NEW YORK (Reuters) – US Open champion Naomi Osaka wore a different mask for each of her matches at Flushing Meadows this year. Each of them bore the name of an African American and were intended to highlight racial injustice in the United States to a wider audience:
ROUND ONE – BREONNA TAYLOR
Taylor, 26, was shot and killed by police in her apartment in Louisville, Kentucky, on March 13.
An involved police officer was fired by the city police department in June. Two other officers have been assigned to administrative reassignment. No criminal charges have been brought against any of the three.
ROUND TWO – ELIJAH MCCLAIN
McClain, 23, died after a violent encounter with police officers in Aurora, Colorado, in August of last year.
His family filed a lawsuit against the city and its police department last month, alleging murder and routine use of excessive force against blacks.
ROUND THREE – AHMAUD ARBERY
Arbery, 25, was fatally shot after being chased by white gunmen while jogging through a suburban Georgia neighborhood in February.
Three white men have been charged with Arbery’s murder in a case that sparked a national outcry after cell phone video of the shooting leaked online.
FOURTH ROUND – TRAYVON MARTIN
Martin was a black teenager whose murder by civilian George Zimmerman in Florida in 2012 helped spark the Black Lives Matter movement https://reut.rs/2ZzpTfP.
QUARTERS FINAL – GEORGE FLOYD
Floyd died in hospital May 25 after Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on the 46-year-old man’s neck for nearly nine minutes during an arrest.
His death sparked massive protests against racial injustice and police brutality in the United States that have spread internationally.
Chauvin and three other Minneapolis police officers were fired a day after video of the incident emerged. Chauvin was later charged with second degree murder and the other three officers with complicity.
SEMIFINALS – PHILANDO CASTILE
Castile was a 32-year-old black man shot and killed by Minnesota police during a traffic stop in a suburb of St. Paul, Minnesota in 2016, sparking protests.
His girlfriend broadcast the aftermath of the incident live on social media, drawing national attention to the case.
A jury acquitted an officer of the charges of involuntary manslaughter and reckless discharge of a firearm.
FINAL – TAMIR RICE
Rice was a 12-year-old African American boy who was fatally shot by police officer Timothy Loehmann in Cleveland, Ohio in 2014 while playing on a playground with a toy gun that fired plastic pellets https://reut.rs/ 3hwLhZm.
In April 2016, Cleveland officials agreed to pay $ 6 million to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit brought by the Rice family.
Loehmann was fired in 2017 after an internal investigation found he provided inaccurate information in his application to join the police force.
(Compiled by Hardik Vyas, Frank Pingue, Arvind Sriram and Simon Jennings; Edited by Stephen Coates and Pritha Sarkar)
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