14 DAY TRIAL // The family of a young black man fatally shot by police last week are speaking out and citing racial discrimination in the way officers have treated the case.
Jonathan A. Ferrell was shot by a police officer ten times while seeking help after a car crash.
He smashed his car in a wooded area in Charlotte, made it out and tried to ask for assistance from a resident.
The woman saw him and thought she was being robbed. She called the police who hunted him down, shooting him without letting him tell his side of the story. His clothes were torn from the crash and he was not armed.
Ferrell was also tasered because he was running at police officers, who summoned him to stop.
The officer pulling the trigger, Randall Kerrick, has been charged in the murder case. Kerrick fired 12 bullets, ten of them hitting the victim.
Ferrell's mother, Georgia has brought her 24-year-old son's Winnie the Pooh doll with her at a press conference and described that she can never replace her son.
According to the AP, family attorney Chris Chestnut has claimed that the victim's race is the main reason why he has been shot.
Georgia Ferrell also mentions forgiving the officer, but hoping that he is not allowed to serve on the force anymore.
She detailed that her son moved to Charlotte to be with his fiancée. He was working two jobs to support himself and was planning to enroll in college. He had dreams of being an automotive design engineer.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People claims that officers in the area have shot and killed several African Americans, without consequence.
Kojo Nantambu, president of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Branch of the NAACP, notes that all investigations into said cases have come up empty.