By Rich McKay
(Reuters) – The Waukegan, Illinois, police video of the shooting death of an unarmed Black teenaged motorist, who wanted to be a rapper, will be released to the public, the mayor said at a prayer vigil Sunday.
The video’s release will add a measure of transparency to last week’s shooting, said the 19-year-old victim’s cousin Satrese Stallworth, one of the many speakers at the event in Waukegan on Sunday.
“But what we really want it justice, and we want it now,” said Stallworth, spokeswoman for the family of Marcellis Stinnette, who died after being shot at the traffic stop just before midnight on Tuesday.
“We need this, as hard as it will be to look at, we need to know what really happened,” Stallworth said.
Stinnette’s 20-year-old girlfriend, Tafarra Williams, was also shot and wounded in the incident.
The prayer vigil was the third peaceful public gathering for Stinnette. It follows a wave of nationwide protests, vigils and marches against racism and police brutality following the May 25 death of African-American George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis, after an officer knelt on his neck.
Stallworth and local Black Lives Matter leader Clyde McLemore said more than 200 people showed up for the vigil. Mayor Sam Cunningham promised the crowd the video would be released, but did provide a time frame, according to local media reports.
Neither Cunningham nor a police representative were immediately available for comment late Sunday.
The officer, whose name has not been released, was fired on Friday for unspecified violations of police policy and procedures.
McLemore said Black Lives Matter and Stinnette’s family also demanded the immediate arrest of all the officers involved on homicide charges.
“We need to know their names and we need to see them in jail,” McLemore said.
Stallworth said the world needs to know what happened.
“We want the world to know that he was full of love, full of life,” she said, noting Stinnette wanted to be a music rapper. “He wanted the world to know his name, but not in this way.”
(Reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta; Editing by Richard Chang)
