On Thursday evening hundreds of people gathered in Crown Heights and marched to protest against police for shooting an unarmed black man, who was brandishing an object that officers thought was a gun.
Saheed Vassell, 34, was shot and killed by police on Wednesday afternoon. The New York police department said it had received calls to 911 that a man was wielding a gun, but it turned out to be a metal pipe.
The protesters lit candles and left flowers at the Thursday night vigil in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn where Saheed Vassell was shot seven to nine times after police say he crouched and pointed a metal pipe at responding officers.
People blocked the corner of Utica Avenue and Montgomery Street, where Vassell was shot, chanting: “no justice, no peace”. Vassell’s mother, Lorna Vassell, was among those to address the crowd.
The victim’s mother, Lorna Vassell, thanked the crowd and said, “Saheed came from a good family, and they had no right to shoot him down the way they did, because Saheed is no gunman,” Vassell said on Thursday night. “They murdered my son and I want justice for him.”
Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio called the shooting a “tragedy” and said Vassell had “a profound mental health problem.”
At one point, national political activist Linda Sarsour went up to the microphone and called for the Brooklyn district attorney to indict the officers involved.
“Those men who killed our brother Saheed need to spend some time in jail,” Sarsour said to cheers.
>Juthy Saha
