BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) – Grieving residents of Baton Rouge honored an appeal at the funeral of a black man killed by police to celebrate his life rather than demonstrate about his death.
At a three-hour service Friday, mourners paid their respects to 37-year-old Alton Sterling, whose July 5 shooting outside a convenience store began a tumultuous week in race relations.
“If you want to protest, please leave now,” Gary Chambers, master of ceremonies for the funeral, said at the beginning that the event at Southern University.
A steady stream of mourners filed past Sterling’s casket, which was adorned with music notes and a smiling photo of the man. Sterling was selling CDs outside the Triple S Food Mart store, as he had done for years, when he was killed by police responding to a call of a man threatening someone with a gun. Police have said they found a gun in Sterling’s pocket.
Sterling’s death was captured on cellphone video and circulated widely on the internet. His death, along with another fatal police shooting in Minnesota last week, sparked widespread protests. Then the fatal shooting of five police officers in Dallas by a black sniper heightened tensions even more.