Less than five months after the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, another Black teen has been shot and killed by police just two miles away in Berkeley. According to initial reports, 18-year old Antonio Martin was shot by an unnamed police officer after pointing a handgun at the officer in the parking lot of a local gas station.
The Associated Press reports that “a Berkeley police officer was conducting a routine business check at a gas station around 11:15 p.m. Tuesday when he saw two men and approached them,” according to county police spokesperson Sgt. Brian Schellman. “Schellman says one of the men pulled a handgun and pointed it at the officer. The officer fired several shots, striking and fatally wounding the man. Schellman says that the second person fled and that the deceased man’s handgun has been recovered.”
A new Huffington Post report quotes the officer’s attorney Brian Millikan in a statement about the incident. “I don’t know why the guy didn’t get a shot off, whether his gun jammed or he couldn’t get the safety off,” the lawyer said, later claiming that the use of lethal force was justified and necessary.
Notably, the officer in question had been assigned a body camera but was apparently not wearing the device at the time of the shooting according to St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar. Additionally, the police “cruiser’s dashboard camera was not activated because the car’s emergency lights were not on,” according to Belmar.
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Footage of the moments leading up to the shooting were captured on video and recently released.
A small group of protesters arrived on the scene shortly after Martin’s death.
A string of Hip Hop artists took to Twitter to respond to the death of the slain teen shortly after the incident.
