Black Lives Matter demonstrators blocked streets in Venice Sunday to protest the deaths of Tyre Nichols, who was fatally injured during an arrest in Memphis, and Keenan Anderson, who died after he was restrained and shocked by a stun gun by Los Angeles police officers.
More than two hundred demonstrators locked arms and forced traffic to be rerouted at Venice and Lincoln boulevards, where the confrontation with Anderson occurred.
“We stopped traffic in the middle of one of the biggest intersections in Los Angeles. If that’s what has to happen, that’s what we’re going to do and we’re not going to stop, and we are not afraid of the police,” activist Taylor Rosa told KTLA.
On Jan. 3, police say they responded to a car crash and found Anderson acting erratically, running into traffic, and they say he tried to carjack an Uber driver.
Officers detained Anderson, a teacher and father from Washington, D.C., restrained him, then used a stun gun. He died hours later after going into cardiac arrest at a local hospital.
Lawyers representing Anderson’s five-year-old son have sued the city for $50 million.
“While Keenan Anderson was being electrocuted by the LAPD, traffic just drove by as if his life did not matter,” Rev. Mark Chase of All Saints Church in Pasadena told KTLA during Sunday’s protest. “Now, everyone is going to stop. Everyone is stopping since we’re here.”
A toxicology test found cocaine and cannabis in Anderson’s body, LAPD Chief Michael Moore said. His cause of death remains under investigation.