Robyne O’Mara, a white retired nurse, was driving to the solidarity march for Stephon Clark on Friday night when news about Clark’s autopsy came on the radio.
“They revealed that Mr. Clark had been shot in the back seven times,” O’Mara said as tears started running down her petite face. “I’m sorry, it’s just that I am outraged.”
Clark, a 22-year-old father of two, was shot and killed by Sacramento police officers in his grandma’s backyard on the evening of March 18. He was unarmed and police said they thought the cellphone in his hand was a gun. On March 30, an independent autopsy commissioned by Clark’s family shows that police shot Clark eight times, and six of those wounds were in his back, one was in his side and another to his left thigh, according to CNN.
At 6 p.m. on March 30, about 100 to 150 protestors marched through the streets in the Central West End and shut down two intersections, shouting, “Cell up, don’t shoot.” Rev. Darryl Gray, one of the organizers of the action, said that going to Jefferson City does not get people’s attention when it comes to saving black lives, but disrupting their economic centers does.
“When we start getting in their comfort zone, they listen,” Gray said. “We are doing everything else that we are supposed to do. It’s not moving the needle. When we show up here, folks begin to listen.”
Pastor Cori Bush, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Congress in the 1st District, spoke and helped lead the protest.
“Someone may say, ‘Oh you’re doing wrong for standing in the street,’” Bush said. “If you care more about that and don’t care enough about the people who are doing wrong by killing black lives, killing brown lives, then you are the problem. So jump in the street with us.”
Daanish Qalbani and his wife, Wendy, did just that. They are in from out of town and were going to dinner in the West End.
“St. Louis is one of the most frustrating places, but it’s one of the most inspiring places to live,” said Qalbani, who used to live in St. Louis. “I learn so much about what’s going on at these protests.”
The action lasted about an hour and crowd seemed to swell as time went on. Some drivers honked and yelled angrily as the the protestors shut down the intersection at Euclid and Lindell.
Sarah Turecamo, who works at Barnes Jewish, was meeting a friend for dinner, and they both stood nearby the intersection and listened.
“I think it’s important what they’re doing,” Turecamo said. “They’re disrupting our day, making us think about these important issues. It’s really easy to forget when you’re in a place of privilege. So I think a protest like this, disrupting people and making them think of it, is important.”
Turecamo said she knew a “fair amount” about the cases the protestors were discussing.
Sacramento police officers fired 20 shots at Clark on the evening of March 18, when they responded to a 911 call about a man who was breaking car windows, according to CNN. Police said they pursued a man — later identified as Clark — who hopped a fence into his grandmother’s property.
As officers followed Clark into the yard, he “turned and advanced toward the officers while holding an object” extended in front of him, according to police.
The officers said they shot Clark because they believed he was pointing a gun at them, but investigators only found a cell phone near his body, CNN reported.
Last week, an unarmed black man was shot dead by a black Texas police officer. In the footage from the dashboard camera, 34-year-old Danny Ray Thomas can be seen walking in the middle of a Houston road with his pants around his ankles before he was killed.
On March 27, Louisiana state authorities announced that two white police officers in Baton Rouge, La., will not be prosecuted in the fatal shooting of Alton B. Sterling almost two years ago. The news comes almost 11 months after federal officials declined to bring criminal charges against the officers. However on March 30, one of the officers was fired and the other was suspended for three days after the department released video showing excessive force.
O’Mara said she started joining protests in September, after former St. Louis police officer Jason Stockley was acquitted in the 2011 fatal shooting of black driver Anthony Lamar Smith. She is “ashamed” that she didn’t join after Ferguson, she said.
“I’m here because of the epidemic of police shooting black people when they are unarmed and always, always getting away with it,” O’Mara said. “It hurts me physically thinking that could happen in my country.”
