The Waukegan police had said the officer, a Hispanic man who had been with the department for five years, opened fire on the car “in fear for his safety.”
Mr. Stinnette was with a woman when the officer approached the car they were in as part of an investigation.
The police have not said why the vehicle was being investigated.
The police said the car went into reverse toward the officer but did not describe how far the officer was from the car, how fast it was moving or any other details of the shooting, which prompted outrage among protesters and relatives of Mr. Stinnette and the driver. No gun was found inside the car, the police said.
The woman in the car was also shot and seriously injured. She was taken to a hospital where she remained as of Friday, the police said.
Clifftina Johnson said her daughter had been shot while driving the car and had undergone surgery for her injuries at a hospital on Thursday.
In a year of widespread demonstrations around the country against police violence and racial injustice, the killing of Mr. Stinnette touched off fresh protests in Waukegan.
The shooting came five months after George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, died after he was handcuffed and pinned to the ground under the knee of a white police officer in Minneapolis. It also happened just 16 miles south of Kenosha, Wis., where Jacob Blake, a 29-year-old Black man, was left partly paralyzed in August after a white police officer shot him seven times in the back.
Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/24/us/waukegan-police-officer-fired.html
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