On Thursday a Montgomery, Ala., police officer shot and killed Greg Gunn, 58, steps away from Gunn’s home. On Monday, Montgomery Mayor Todd Strange and Police Chief Ernest Finley held a press conference, where Gunn’s brother Franklin Gunn asked them both for five minutes. Five minutes, he said, that had his brother been afforded the night he was killed, might have saved his life.
“You couldn’t give my brother five minutes,” Franklin Gunn said, the Montgomery Advertiser reports. “They didn’t even look at him as a man. They looked at the color of his skin; he was judged and he was tried.”
According to the Montgomery Advertiser, Greg Gunn was outside the home he shared with his mother around 3:20 a.m. Thursday, when Officer A.C. Smith stopped him for looking “suspicious.” Strange told those gathered that he didn’t know why the officer deemed Gunn suspicious, but added that all patrol officers were aware of a recent rash of burglaries in the area.
Finley said that a struggle ensued between Smith, who is white, and Gunn. Smith fatally shot Gunn during the altercation, and EMS members pronounced Gunn dead shortly after they arrived.
Local attorney Tyrone Means, who represents the Gunn family, told the Associated Press that Gunn regularly played cards with a neighbor after work and would walk home when he was finished.
“Trayvon Martin was a black kid walking in a predominantly white neighborhood, and someone just thought he looked suspicious,” Means told AP. “Greg Gunn was in a community in which he was well-known and well-loved. That’s scary.”
Strange told those gathered, including Gunn’s brother, that the process is out of local police hands and the State Bureau of Investigations is collecting evidence and heading the investigation.
“We’re not satisfied, either,” Strange said. “We obviously want answers. It’s out of our hands. We’ve done everything possible to make sure this is done correctly.”
“All this gentleman was doing was walking home,” Means told AP. “Little did the family expect that a walk this man has done all his life would end with him dying in terror.”
Read more at the Montgomery Advertiser and the Associated Press.