ATLANTA (AP) — Scores of mourners Tuesday paid their final respects to Rayshard Brooks at the Atlanta church where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. used to preach, taking part in a funeral rich with historical echoes and filled with a tragic sense that Black America has been through this all too many times before.
This is about him, but it is so much bigger than him,” the Rev. Raphael Warnock, senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church, told the crowd, less than two weeks after the Black man was shot twice in the back by a white Atlanta police officer following a struggle in a fast-food parking lot.
Brooks’ killing June 12 came amid weeks of turbulent and sometimes violent protests across the U.S. over Floyd’s death under a white Minneapolis officer’s knee on May 25.
Brooks, 27, was shot by Officer Garrett Rolfe after a struggle that erupted when police tried to handcuff him for being intoxicated behind the wheel of his car at a Wendy’s drive-thru.
Atlanta’s police chief stepped down less than 24 hours after Brooks’ death, and the Wendy’s was burned by protesters.
