The case of Cyrus Carmack-Belton, a 14-year-old who was allegedly shot and killed by a convenience store owner who suspected the young boy of shoplifting a bottle of water, immediately sparked comparisons to 1991 shooting of Latasha Harlins in L.A.
The killing of Cyrus Carmack-Belton by a South Carolina gas station owner sparked comparisons to the 1991 killing of Latasha Harlins, whose shooting death at the hands of a Korean convenience store owner inflamed racial tensions in L.A.
Rick Chow, a S.C. gas station owner, was charged with murder in the shooting of Cyrus Carmack-Belton. “Even if he [Cyrus] had shoplifted 4 bottles of water, which is what he initially took out of the cooler and then put them back, even if he had done that, that’s not something you shoot anybody over,” Lott explained.
The young boy’s death has sparked outrage in the community. “What happened to him wasn’t an accident: It’s something that the Black community has experienced for generations — being racially profiled, then shot down in the street like a dog,” Todd Rutherford, the family’s attorney, said in a statement on Wednesday.
“You have African American youth — he's [Cyrus] 14 years old, Latasha was only 15 years old. You have a person who's being accused wrongfully of shopkeeping, you have Asian American shopkeeper, you have the presumption of guilt from the shopkeeper of one of his customers and you have the aggressive behavior of the shopkeeper towards this African American teenager,” Stevenson said.
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