BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) – For a third night, protesters trying to make sense of recent events gathered at the store where a black man was shot to death by police, emotions stoked by another fatal shooting in Minnesota.
“It’s everything adding up,” said Damond Laurance, a 29-year-old welder. “As a race, as a culture, we’re standing up for something. We’re coming together.”
Alton Sterling, 37, was killed Tuesday during an altercation outside of a convenience store where he was selling CDs. Cellphone video of his shooting was posted online and set off angry protests in this city of about 229,000, where 54 percent of the population is black and more than 25 percent live in poverty.
In Minnesota, Philando Castile’s girlfriend streamed video to Facebook after he was shot by a police officer Wednesday.
“We’re still grieving for the loss of Alton, and this happens less than 24 hours later,” said Artiyana McGee, a 20-year-old student who stood among the protesters Thursday night with her mother, Dawn. Her mother held a sign with “#Justice 4 Philando Castile” on it.