Nurturing by nature, black women try and hold it down for our brothers who are racially profiled, tirelessly advocating when the unjustifiable killings of our black sons, brothers, fathers or friends occurs. But what about the sisters who are helpless victims in cases where their death was in vain, and could have been prevented had it not been for racism. Racism in this country seems to be getting more blatant – a suffocating, thick-as-pound-cake cloud that looms over black folk, and weighs on our hearts as we try to go about our daily lives and make sense of senseless acts. Let us not forget about our sisters – the ones who fell prey to the injustices of the world. Let us remember the black women who died unjustly too.
Tyisha Miller
On December 28, 1998, Tyisha Miller, a 19-year-old African American woman from Rubidoux California, was killed after family members called police officers to help them with their relative who was comatose and locked inside her car with the engine running and the radio on. Tyisha was said to have been shaking and foaming at the mouth, and had a .380 semi-automatic pistol in her lap. When the four Police officers arrived at the scene and were informed by family members of the presence of a gun in the car, they approached the vehicle with guns drawn. After trying to get a response from Tyisha, they attempted to force entry into the vehicle in order to get the young woman the medical attention she needed. As one of the officers was attempting to remove the gun, Tyisha reportedly sat up and grabbed the weapon, at which point the officers opened fire 23 times, hitting Ms. Miller with at least 12 bullets, including 4 in the head. The officers involved, three white and one Hispanic, were placed on administrative leave and claimed they had acted in self-defense.
Kathryn Johnston
Kathryn Johnston was an elderly Atlanta, Georgia, woman who was shot by undercover police officers in her home on November 21, 2006, where she had lived for 17 years. Three officers had entered her home in what was later described as a “botched” drug raid. Officers cut off burglar bars and broke down her door using a no-knock warrant. Police said Johnston fired at them and they fired in response; she fired one shot out the door over the officers’ heads and they fired 39 shots, five or six of which hit her. None of the officers were injured by her gunfire, but Johnston was killed by the officers. Police injuries were later attributed to “friendly fire” from each other’s weapons. One of the officers planted marijuana in Johnston’s house after the shooting. Later investigations found that the paperwork stating that drugs were present at Johnston’s house, which had been the basis for the raid, had been falsified. The officers later admitted to having lied when they submitted coke as evidence claiming that they had bought it at Johnston’s house. Three officers were tried for manslaughter and other charges surrounding falsification and were sentenced to ten, six, and five years.
Rekia Boyd
Less than one month after Trayvon Martin was shot and killed in Florida last year, 22-year-old unarmed Rekia Boyd died after an off-duty Chicago police officer shot her, claiming self-defense. The officer said he drove up to a group of people at 1 a.m. while looking into a disturbance near his home. The officer pulled out his gun and fired after he saw 39-year-old Antonio Cross pull out a gun. The shots hit Boyd in the head, and she died the next day. Cross claims he was using his cell phone, which was mistaken for a gun. Also, witnesses say the off-duty officer was intoxicated, and approached the group in civilian clothes, and never identified himself as a police officer. He was reportedly belligerent, yelling at the group people to “shut up.”
Adaisha Miller
A woman celebrating the weekend before her 25th birthday last July was fatally shot Sunday when she hugged off-duty police officer, Issac Parish, while dancing at a party, causing the officer’s service weapon to fire, according to police and her mother. The shooting happened at an outdoor social gathering about 12:30 am on the city’s west side., according to police Sgt. Eren Stephens. As Stephens told it, the woman “embraced the officer from behind, causing the holstered weapon to accidentally discharge.”
The bullet punctured Miller’s lung and hit her heart, and she died at a hospital. The Detroit officer remained on administrative duties while authorities investigated the shooting and reported their findings to the Wayne County prosecutor. Varying reports that Adaisha was either kneeling behind the officer and performing an exotic dance when she accidentally triggered the officer’s gun, or that she came to the party stumbling drunk and reached for him and the gun went off have raised suspicions about how Adaisha was actually shot and whether it was indeed an accident.
Kendra James
Kendra James, an African American mother of two, was wanted on a warrant for failing to appear in court in Portland in 2003. During a routine traffic stop, Officer Rick Bean, who pulled the car over, told Kendra he recognized her while attempting to identify the rental car’s driver and called for backup. Officer Kenneth Reynolds and Scott McCollister helped take both the driver, Terry Jackson, and the front seat passenger, Darnell White, into custody, leaving 115-pound, 5-foot-2 Kendra alone in the back seat.
Kendra jumped into the front seat and, according to the police, tried to drive away. McCollister tried grabbing her hair and pepper spraying her but could not operate the canister so fired one shot. The bullet hit Kendra James in the hip, traveled up to her lower rib cage, and killed her. The officers pulled James out and handcuffed her, which is standard procedure; however, they left her lying unattended while they set up a crime scene perimeter, rather than staying with her until paramedics arrived. The police did not check her vital signs, Reynolds said, because he thought she was “faking” being unconscious and did not know she had been shot. She died four hours later.
Tarika Wilson
Unarmed, Tarika Wilson, 26, was shot and killed by a white police officer during a drug raid in 2008. Police Sgt. Joseph Chavalia was part of a SWAT team that raided Tarika’s home in January of that year looking for her boyfriend, a suspected drug dealer who later pleaded guilty to drug trafficking. Prosecutors said Chavalia recklessly fired three shots into a bedroom where Tarika and her six children were gathered, even though he could not clearly see her or whether she had a weapon.
Tarika was holding her 1-year-old son in her arms when she died and the child was also shot and later had a finger amputated. Officer Chavalia was acquitted of criminal charges in the young woman’s death and has since returned to work, though he is no longer allowed to patrol the streets. Tarika’s family has also settled a wrongful death lawsuit against the city for $2.5 million. Her death ignited protests and debate about race relations in Lima, a northwest Ohio city, where one in four residents is black.
Shelly Frey
An off-duty Houston police officer shot and killed Shelly Frey, a 27-year-old black mother of two, for suspected shoplifting at a North Houston Walmart in 2012. According to police, it all started when Deputy Louis Campbell, who worked an extra job as a Walmart security guard, was told by two Walmart employees that Shelly and her friends were stuffing merchandise into their purses. When Campbell confronted them at the store’s exit, police say one of the women hit him with her purse and ran. Campbell chased them into the parking lot and held their car door open to stop them from leaving, but the driver sped off, at which point Campbell fired at the car, striking Shelly Frey in the neck. She died shortly thereafter at a nearby apartment complex. What remains questionable is whether or not the police officer had to shoot inside the car, as opposed to a tire in order to stop and thus, detain the women.
Shantel Davis
In 2012, 23-year-old Shantel Davis had been driving erratically headed westbound on Church Ave. in Brooklyn, and was spotted by undercover police officers running red lights at different intersections. Police pursued the woman and discovered she was driving a stolen grey Toyota Camry, and when she came to a final intersection and crashed into a minivan headed the opposite way they attempted to coax her out of the car. During the scuffle, officer Phil Atkins allegedly shot her by accident in the chest. He and another officer removed Shantel from the car, and she collapsed on the street in a pool of blood and later died while being transported to King’s County Hospital.
Alesia Thomas
At least five police officers were under investigation after a woman died during a violent arrest in which an officer kicked her in her genitals. Alesia Thomas, 35, died July 22, 2012.The confrontation with officers occurred after she abandoned her 3-year-old and 12-year-old children at a police station around 2 a.m. and they wandered inside, drawing the attention of an officer, police said. Police Cmdr. Bob Green said the woman was giving up the children because she was a drug addict who could not care for them. Police tracked down the South Los Angeles resident and were trying to arrest her on suspicion of child endangerment, when she supposedly “put up a violent struggle” and “she began actively resisting arrest, attempting to pull away from the officers.”
One officer knocked Alesia to the ground by sweeping her legs out from beneath her and two other officers then handcuffed Thomas behind her back and attempted to lead her to a patrol car according to the department’s official report. Two other officers also arrived at the scene.Green said Thomas was a large woman and officers used a “hobble restraint device” – a strap that was wrapped around her ankles. Green confirmed to the Times that during the struggle to get Thomas into the back of the patrol car, a female officer threatened to kick Thomas in the genitals and then did so. Once Thomas was in the car, video showed her breathing shallowly until she ultimately drew her last breath.
Anna Brown
In 2012, Anna Brown, a 29-year-old mother of two kids, had visited several hospitals complaining of pain in her legs. When she was ignored at St. Mary’s Hospital, she refused to leaved, screaming and yelling that she was in pain and couldn’t stand. The hospital had her arrested. The police dragged her out of the hospital and into a squad car. At the Richmond Heights Police Department, she cried that she couldn’t stand up or get out of the car, so the officers dragged her out of the car, into a jail cell, and left her there. Fifteen minutes later she was dead from a pulmonary embolism.
