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by Our Foreign Desk
FRIENDS and relatives of two black neighbours shot dead by police in the US city of Chicago gathered in protest on Sunday.
University student Quintonio LeGrier and grandmother Bettie Jones were killed on Saturday morning after police were called to deal with an argument between the teenager and his father Antonio LeGrier at their upstairs flat in the two-storey building.
Police claimed that officers “were confronted by a combative subject resulting in the discharging of the officer’s weapon,” adding that Ms Jones “was accidentally struck.”
Mr LeGrier Jnr was home for Christmas holidays from Northern Illinois University, where he studied electrical engineering.
He was outside the downstairs flat, reportedly holding a baseball bat, when the police arrived. His father heard Ms Jones shout: “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” before police shot his son multiple times.
“I used to watch the news daily and I would grieve for other mothers, other family members, and now today I’m grieving myself,” Mr LeGrier’s mother Janet Cooksey told reporters on Sunday.
“Why do (police) have to shoot first and ask questions later?” Ms Jones’s friend Jacqueline Walker asked. “It’s ridiculous.”
On Sunday the Washington Post reported that 965 people had been shot dead by US police in 2015, 90 of whom were unarmed.
The report said that while black men represented 6 per cent of the US population, they made up 40 per cent of those shot dead by police this year.
Three out of five of those killed who were not armed with a gun had either black or Latin American heritage, the report said.
