Earlier this week, bodycam footage was released of the violent and fatal shooting of Jayland Walker. The shooting happened shortly after a traffic stop turned into a car chase throughout the city. It ended in police pursuing him on foot. Walker was shot more than 60 times by multiple officers in Akron, Ohio. The video garnered outrage from social justice leaders and other viewers who watched the shocking video.
“This is going to be a brutal video,” the family’s attorney, Attorney Bobby DiCello, told USA Today ahead of the video’s release. Despite the video circulating the internet, Jayland Walker’s older sister says she isn’t ready to watch her brother be gunned down by police officers. “It’s just not the person I know,” she told ABC News.
She described the multiple shots police fired at her brother as “aim practice.” Walker’s sister doesn’t believe the false narrative the police created in the moments leading up to her brother’s killing. She and the family’s attorney believe her brother was purposely depicted in a negative light. Jada Walker appeared for the interview with ABC News Wednesday (July 6) and was visibly emotional.
She recalled her brother’s life, advocating that he wasn’t the man that the Akron, OH police department portrayed him to be. Jada added that she never knew of her brother to own a gun. Instead, she chooses to remember and cherish the good memories of Jayland. The family’s attorney addressed the photo of the gun in Jayland’s car that circulated the internet. “This looked like a staged picture, he said.
Jada says their family has yet to receive a solid answer as to how something like this could happen to someone without a criminal record. A correspondent from ABC News concurred that Jada isn’t the only person who described Jayland as peaceful.
Watch the ABC interview below.