The fatal shooting of an 8-year-old girl in Atlanta near the Wendy’s restaurant where Rayshard Brooks was killed last month by police prompted Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms to make a plea for an end to the violence.
“Enough is enough,” Bottoms said in an emotional press conference at Atlanta police headquarters attended by the family of Secoriea Turner.
“I am just asking you to please honor this baby’s life,” Bottoms said, asking for information on the killers. “Please, if you know who did this, please turn them in. These people are a danger to all of us.”
The men involved in the shooting were described as “a group of Black males.” A $10,000 reward is being offered for information leading to their arrest, WAGA reported.
Secoriea’s mother, Charmaine Turner, and other members of her family, stood by Bottoms who said the shooting is the fault of armed individuals near the Wendy’s restaurant on University Avenue. Demonstrators have camped for weeks near the Wendy’s where Brooks was shot after falling asleep in his car. Police confronted him and Brooks was shot.
According to police, Secoriea was riding in a car with her mother and another adult when they turned into the parking lot of a business across the street from the Wendy’s. The car was “confronted by a group of armed individuals who had blocked the entrance,” interim police chief Rodney Bryant said, according to The Washington Post.
“At some point someone in the group opened fire on the vehicle, striking it multiple times, striking the child who was inside,” Bryant said.
After being rushed to a nearby hospital, Secoriea died. “She died in my arms,” Turner said.
“Enough is enough,” Bottoms said at the press conference. “You can’t blame this on a police officer. You can’t say this is about criminal justice reform. This is about some people carrying some weapons who shot up a car with an 8-year-old baby in the car. For what?”
Bottoms was criticized on Twitter following the press conference for offending many by focusing on Black-on-Black crime and her comment, “You can’t blame this on a police officer.”
AllBlackLivesMatter @HarlemMC tweeted, “Here we go with the ‘Black on Back crime’ white supremacist talking points. What she neglects to mention, is that when this person is caught and tried, they will be convicted, unlike cops committing murder with impunity.”
Dub Cee @mactown25 tweeted, “@keishabottoms we’re allowed to DEMAND an end to police brutality. The Black community doesn’t have to have zero crime and zero murders before we are allowed to complain. So yes, we will continue to protest lawless police whose salaries we pay. #BLM”
Carmen Dixon @CarmenMDixon tweeted, “Per usual @KeishaBottoms responding to the murder of a Black person with an anti-Black statement.”
Listen to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin | Episode 73: Jamarlin Martin Jamarlin makes the case for why this is a multi-factor rebellion vs. just protests about George Floyd. He discusses the Democratic Party’s sneaky relationship with the police in cities and states under Dem control, and why Joe Biden is a cop and the Steve Jobs of mass incarceration.
The tragic death hurts the Black Lives Matter movement, according to Bottoms. “That’s an important movement that’s happening,” she said. “There are peaceful demonstrators across this city and across this country, and I applaud them and I thank them for being peaceful and for honoring the lives of so many people who have been killed in America because of injustice. But this random wild, wild West, shoot ’em up because you can — it has got to stop. It has to stop.”
It was a deadly weekend. More than 20 people were shot and two others were killed in multiple shootings in Atlanta over the July Fourth weekend, The Atlanta Constitution reported.
