Conflicting accounts were surrounding a police shooting that killed a Black man in Chicago Wednesday night, with some suggesting officers were trying to cover it up. What police described to the Chicago Tribune as “an armed encounter between the offender and police” was actually an execution, with officer shooting Maurice Granton, Jr. in the back as he ran away, according to reports on social media.
Adding to the confusion was police claiming that Granton had a gun and pointed it at them before running, but Granton’s family has said the gun that was “recovered” did not belong to him.
“Since when does running validate somebody getting shot?”Joanna Varnado, Granton’s sister, asked rhetoricaly. “I don’t understand that. You’re not being offensive, you’re being defensive.”
Granton, 24, was the father of two daughters.
“I just want to know what the real story is,” Varnado told the Tribune. “If it was misconduct, I want justice. My brother was 24 years old. He loved his girls. That’s all he lived for, was his kids.”
The Chicago Police Department has long has a reputation for corruption and overall malfeasance, including some new wrongful convictions that were reported by the Associated Press just this week.
“We’ve had all kinds of police corruption, we’ve had police torture cases, but we’ve never had so many cases where there is clear evidence that police actually set people up for crimes they didn’t commit,” Marshall Hatch, a minister and activist in Chicago, told the AP on Sunday.
This is a developing story.
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This story was originally published on NewsOne.
Fatal Chicago Police Shooting Of Maurice Granton, Jr. Disputed By Victim’s Family was originally published on newsone.com
