Sister of Nigerian man, who died after being tased by US cops, speaks out

 

Chinedu Okobi pictured with his family after his 2003 graduation.Chinedu Okobi pictured with his family after his 2003 graduation.

The sister of a Nigerian man, Chinedu Okobi, killed by American police has spoken out in a very touching post via Facebook on Sunday.

Ebele Okobi, a public policy director for Africa at Facebook in a post on the social media platform, spoke of how her brother had died after being tased by California deputies last month — Ebele noted that unreleased video, contradicts police report of the way her brother died.

In her words:

“They were shocking because they contradicted, in every single particular, the statement that the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office released and to which San Mateo District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe referred in multiple news outlets after my brother’s murder.”

“They grab him, rip off his jacket. He tries to run, asking, ‘What’s wrong? What did I do?'” Ebele OKobi wrote. She said her brother was then tased and fell to the ground while keeping his hands raised.
“He is not fighting, just crying in pain. I will never forget the visual of his hands, waving above his head, open, begging. He begs them to take the taser prongs off of him. He tries to pull them off himself.”
When there is a break in the torture, my brother staggers to his knees, tries to run away. A deputy pulls out his baton, strikes, they tase him again. My brother goes down. At some point, my brother tries to run across the street, they chase him, they tase him, they pepper spray him, they jump on top of him while he is prone.”
Eventually, the footage shows someone shouting “I see blood, then it’s over.” No CPR or other life-saving measures are administered, she writes.
She further noted that Black people in America live in anxiety, no matter where they work or went to school.
“It doesn’t matter what school you went to,” she said. “You can go to Harvard. You can work in tech. Every black American will tell you they live in a state of constant anxiety. Every black man will tell you they can work at Google, they can be a senior person at Facebook or Apple but when you’re driving and you’re a black man, you recognize the danger that you’re in.”

Chinedu Okobi pictured with his daughter.

Chinedu Okobi graduated in 2003 with a degree in business administration from Morehouse College in Atlanta, CNN report. He grew up in the San Francisco area as the youngest son of a Nigerian-American family.