Outrage in Oakland After Cop Kills Unarmed Man: Piecing Together the Story

By AlterNet Staff, AlterNet. Posted January 14, 2009.

UPDATE

Johannes Mehserle, the former BART police officer who shot and killed Oscar Grant, an unarmed African-American man on New Year's Day, has been arrested on homicide charges.

The arrest came as somewhat of a surprise; on Monday BART officials completed their probe into the incident but refused to recommend whether Mehserle should be charged with a crime. Although Alameda County had launched a separate investigation, few expected an arrest so soon. Distict Attorney Tom Orloff stated Thursday that he would decide if Mehserle should be charged within two weeks.

At a news conference today, Orloff said Mehserle was being charged with murder because the evidence shows "an unlawful killing done by intentional act."

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, which broke the story, Grant’s family’s lawyer said late Tuesday night “ ...  the family is delighted, and it will really help with the healing process ... This is also very important for the community. This had to occur; it was almost a no-brainer.”

On Jan. 1, Oscar Grant, an unarmed 22-year-old African American man, was shot and killed by a white Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer.

Videos of the shooting, which show Grant pinned facedown on the ground shortly before being shot in the back, catapulted the story to national attention and sparked community outrage that boiled over into violent protests last Wednesday night.

Nevertheless, authorities dawdled in investigating the crime -- Johannes Mehserle, the officer who killed Grant, was only detained yesterday.

What Happened Jan. 1

BART police officers, who had received reports of fighting aboard a BART train headed for the East Bay, detained a group of men, including Grant, at the Fruitvale BART Station. George Ciccariello-Maher, writing in the San Francisco Bay View, describes what happened next:

Several of the men, all young and mostly black, were lined up, seated, along the platform. Some were cuffed, Oscar Grant was not. As he was attempting to defuse the situation, BART police decided to detain him, placing him facedown on the platform, with one officer kneeling near his neck and another straddling his legs.

For some still unexplained reason, one officer, now identified as Johannes Mehserle stood up, pulled his gun and fired a shot directly into Oscar Grant's back.

The bullet went through Grant's back, ricocheting off the platform and puncturing his lung. There are gasps from the bystanders and shock on the faces of the other officers, who clearly didn't expect the shot to be fired. Grant, who was begging not to be Tasered at the time of the shot, clearly didn't expect it either.

But this surprise notwithstanding, the decision was then made to cuff the young man as he lay dying.

A friend of Grant’s, interviewed by KTVU, says Grant had tried to calm the situation and begged officers not to hurt him:

"Oscar yelled, 'You shot me! I got a 4-year-old daughter,' " said Fernando Anicete. "Oscar was telling us to calm down, and we did. We weren't looking for any trouble."

Kristina Vargas, an eyewitness who recorded the incident with her camera phone, relates her impressions of the shooting in a video interview:

When the gunshot went off, I turned to the boy, and saw the smoke from the gun, so I know it was the boy that was shot. The police were standing over him at that point. And I look at the officer … and his eyes are like -- he’s in shock for what he just did.

And you see another officer nudge him on the shoulder and ask, 'Why did you do that? What happened?' And the officer who shot the boy was like, 'I don’t know,' just looking at him like he couldn’t believe what he had done.

See more stories tagged with: african americans, protests, police violence, shooting, oakland, oscar grant, bart, johannes mehserle

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