The family and friends of Robert Adams, a 23-year-old Black security guard shot and killed by San Bernardino, California, police, said their goodbyes at a funeral service for him on Saturday. “I am in pain,” his mother Tamika King said in remarks the Los Angeles Times captured the day before the service. “I won’t see my son walk through that door no more. I won’t see his beautiful smile. I won’t have his love and loyalty that he had for his family no more.”
An independent autopsy commissioned by Adams' family showed that he suffered a gunshot wound to the back and was also injured in his arm, thigh, and ankle, all wounds from the back, the family's attorney Ben Crump said during a Friday news conference.
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“There was no reason for them to shoot this Black man running away from them,” Crump said.
Adams' family said police officers failed to identify themselves as officers when they got out of an unmarked vehicle on July 16, chased Adams and, as the autopsy confirmed, shot him seven times from behind in a parking lot.
“If it was one shot, you may try to say ‘oh, that’s human error,’” Crump said before the funeral, “but no, seven shots, that’s human decision.”
San Bernardino police alleged in a Facebook post that the incident began with two uniformed officers with the department's specialized investigations unit conducting surveillance in the parking lot after learning a "black male armed with a gun was in the parking lot of an illegal online gambling business."
The officers were in an unmarked vehicle.
Warning: This video contains violent footage of a police shooting that may be triggering for viewers.
San Bernardino Police Chief Darren Goodman said in a video released on July 19 that a number of community members were walking and in vehicles in the area and residents were in nearby homes when police arrived to find Adams with a gun in his waistband. When Adams approached officers with a gun in hand they gave him two “verbal commands,” but Adams ran toward two parked vehicles, Goodman said.
“Officers briefly chased Adams,” Goodman said. “But seeing that he had no outlet, they believed he intended to use the vehicle as cover to shoot at them.”
"The officers saw Adams look over his left shoulder with the gun still in his right hand," the chief continued. "Fearing that bystanders or the officers' lives were in danger, one of the officers fired his gun striking Adams."
He later died after being taken to a local hospital. The other man on the scene was taken into custody “without incident,” police said.
Crump questioned the decisions officers made leading up to that deadly encounter. "If there was a 911 call, why would you show up with undercover police officers,” he asked. “Why wouldn't you show up with an identifiable marked police vehicle so Rob and everybody else would know this was the police?"
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