The Rev. Al Sharpton blamed a "barbaric" criminal element — in part — for the accidental shooting death of a Brooklyn woman during a parade on Labor Day and called on the New York Police Department to make a definitive ruling on whether a police bullet killed her, according to the Daily News.
Denise Gay, who would have turned 57 on Friday, was struck down by a stray bullet while sitting on the front stoop of her Crown Heights home, as cops engaged her ex-con neighbor in a gun battle.
"There was a crime they were responding to," Sharpton said of the police. "But to those who act thuggish in our community — with your barbaric disregard for our lives — you make us vulnerable, too. You put us in a position we should never be in."
Joined on the stage of the National Action Network headquarters by the dead woman's brother, Les Gay, Sharpton also questioned police conduct and training in the wake of the 70-plus shot fusillade that killed the woman on Monday night.
While it's too late to save Gay, whose life was cut down amid the wild gunfire, it's not too late for justice to be pursued. If preliminary ballistics test were inconclusive, perhaps other steps can be taken to determine where the fatal bullet came from. This is only the beginning of the investigation.
Read more at the Daily News.
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