U.S. Marshals Service Officer Kills Young Black Man, Brandon Webber, Memphis Erupts into Protests

Brandon Webber, age 20, was shot as many as 20 times before dying in his own family’s front yard.

Earlier on Wednesday night, a man posted a video to Twitter of him confronting police officers about his relative. The police had formed a barricade in the street.

“My cousin down there, laying in the street!” the man yelled. “Laying in the yard!”

The shooting happened around 7 p.m. Wednesday night in Frayser, a neighborhood less than five miles north of downtown Memphis, Tennessee.

Frayser was being served multiple felony warrants by the Marshal Service’s Gulf Coast Regional Fugitive Task Force and other law enforcement agencies, according to The Washington Post.

Webber rammed into the marshals’ car with his own car several times and then displayed a weapon, according to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.

Night fell and news of the shooting spread. It didn’t take long before the city erupted. Protests broke out resulting in a standoff between authorities and hundreds of residents. On one side, police stood shoulder to shoulder holding riot shields and on the other were people shouting at officers, hurling bottles, rocks and bricks, police said. Protestors used a chair to smash out the back window of a police car and another man spit on officers. Much of it was captured on social media.


A rainstorm and tear gas from the police finally emptied the streets.

Shelby County Commissioner Tami Sawyer, a Democrat, and progressive activist said, “What do people do with their pain and trauma when it gets to be too much when a city has ignored them when their loss is too great and they can no longer yell at the sky?”

Memphis is another city with a history of police violence.

“Every time I turned around, I saw another person with tears in their eyes, furious at another life lost,” community activist Hunter Demster told the Memphis Commercial Appeal.

A GoFundMe page has been created to raise funds for Brandon Webber’s funeral.

Related

Trending Now

Follow us

Most Popular

Join Our Newsletter

Get the top workplace fairness news delivered straight to your inbox