The girlfriend of Antonio Martin, the 18-year-old killed by a police officer in Barkeley Missouri earlier this week, says she hasn’t been able to sleep since her boyfriend was shot dead.
Kenna Brown revisited the site of the shooting on Christmas Eve, where she spoke to the media about the immense grief she feels in the wake of Antonio’s death.
“He didn’t deserve to die,” Brown told the Huffington Post. “He was so scared, I’m telling you, he was so scared. He looked at me like, ‘Baby, please jump in and say something to save me.'”
According to Brown, she arrived to the scene shortly after Martin was shot. St. Louis County Police chief Jon Belmar alleges that Antonio pointed a gun a the officer, who was responding to a robbery at the gas station where the shooting occurred. The officer confronted Martin and another person to question them about the robbery.
The officer fired three shots, one of which hit Antonio and eventually killed him. The other person involved fled from the scene.
According to Kenna, it took nearly 30 minutes for an ambulance to arrive. She also alleges that emergency responders hung up her phone call to request emergency medical help.
Brown says police officers prohibited her from comforting or providing any help to her boyfriend while they waited for emergency responders to arrive. The 19-year-old told Huffington Post that when she told police she was Martin’s girlfriend they told her they didn’t care.
“You can’t tell me you don’t care about my baby being dead over there and you still got his body down,” she said.
Antonio, who frequently stayed at his girlfriend’s house, had been with her early in the day. She said the two were at her house when Martin decided to walk to the gas station. It wasn’t until some time had passed without his return home that she became worried. She walked down to the Mobil station where she found him on the ground bleeding.
“I should’ve been there to protect him, that’s all I wanted,” she said. “That’s my baby.”
After the incident several protestors gathered to speak out against Martin’s death. Like we’ve seen in previous demonstrations, many took to the streets, shutting down an interstate highway. According to the Huffington Post another group of protestors attempted, but failed, to loot a beauty supply store.
One crowd staged a “die-in” in reaction to the killing.
“We say ‘black lives matter’ this was not the case,” said Mayor Theodore Hoskins during a press conference earlier that day. “You can’t even compare this with Ferguson or the Garner case in New York.”
In a statement released by the co-founders of the Black Lives Matter movement, the leaders demanded an end to what they called the “war on black bodies.”
“While political leaders make speeches and shake hands, Black people killed by police continue to lay in the concrete streets of our communities,” the statement read. “Every day that goes by without meaningful change, we lose another Black person to state sanctioned violence.”
SOURCE: Huffington Post | PHOTO CREDIT: Getty
