Hundreds of protesters blocked a highway and set fire to Wendy’s fast food restaurant near which Rayshard Brooks, 27, was shot dead in a confrontation with police, local media reported.
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, whose name has been put forward as a possible running mate of Democrat Joe Biden for the November presidential election, announced the resignation of Erika Shields, who had headed the city’s police for more 20 years old.
“Due to her desire for Atlanta to be a model of what meaningful reform should be across the country, Erika Shields tendered her immediate resignation as chief of police,” the mayor said in televised statements.
The facts occurred Friday evening in Atlanta, capital of the state of Georgia.
They come as numerous protests against police violence and against racism have been taking place for weeks in the United States and other countries, following the death of George Floyd, an African-American who died of suffocation by a police officer in Minneapolis, in the northern United States.
Rayshard Brooks, a 27-year-old black man, fell asleep in his car on the drive-through driveway at Wendy’s restaurant, according to an official report, and establishment workers called the police because his vehicle blocked customers.
The man was drunk and resisted when police tried to arrest him, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) report said.
Video surveillance footage shows “that during a physical struggle with the officers, Brooks grabbed the Taser from one of the officers and fled,” according to the report.
–
