teleSUR English | 9/5/2016
Santa Maria, a Californian city mostly home to Latino agricultural workers, is still rattling from the shooting of Javier Garcia Gaona, a suicidal man killed by police July 20.
Garcia Gaona’s family cannot afford the costs of his funeral, and the video of his graphic death is quickly making the rounds among police brutality activists. It has been “replayed as a spectacle for everyone to see,” wrote his cousin Maribel Morales in a plea to fund the services.
The video shows Garcia Gaona, who had been holding a knife to his neck, trying to run from the officers before they showered him with bullets until long after he hit the ground—similar to the shooting of Laquan McDonald, who was shot 16 times. He had been suffering from bouts of depression and was “obviously in a state of mental anguish,” according to a press release from the family’s attorneys, but the video shows a clear “lack of concern for Javier’s condition before, during, and after the violence was initiated by officers.”
“The family is devastated—who wouldn’t be?” said the family’s lawyer, Eric Schweitzer, to teleSUR. The family filed a civil claim on Wednesday against the city for US$3 million and better training for police—not for money, he said, but for justice.
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Naomi Cohen | journalist 