Zachary Hammond Shooting: Family Blames Silence On Race

A recent independent autopsy has made findings that contradict a police officer's account of the death of Zachary Hammond, an unarmed white 19-year-old who was shot and killed in South Carolina by Seneca police on July 26.

The teen was driving the vehicle toward the officer, forcing him to begin shooting out of fear for his life, according to the officer's reports. However, the autopsy revealed that Hammond was shot from the side, contradicting the initial report, according to The Guardian,

Eric Bland, the Hammond family's attorney, notes that the autopsy brings the validity of the police report into question, according to The Root.

"When he [the officer] shot, it was physically impossible for the car to hit him because he's next to him [Hammond]," Bland told The Guardian. "So unless a hurricane comes and blows the car over, it's physically impossible for him to be hit by a car at that point."

"It is not reasonable," the autopsy reads, that Hammond "would have suffered these injuries in these anatomic locations [the back of his shoulder and the side of his chest] had [he] been shot from either the rear or the front of the vehicle."

However, it's been more than a week since Hammond's death, and there has been almost no national outrage regarding the incident - a reaction that Hammond's family and Bland believe is due entirely to race, according to The Washington Post.

"It's sad, but I think the reason is, unfortunately, the media and our government officials have treated the death of an unarmed white teenager differently than they would have if this were a death of an unarmed black teen," Bland said this week. "The hypocrisy that has been shown toward this is really disconcerting."

Bland insists that if Hammond was black, then there would have been a greater focus on the case.

"They're called the civil rights organizations, they're not called the black rights organizations," Bland said. "The color of his skin should not matter. White-on-white crime does not get the same impact as white-on-black crime."

Black activists have taken to Twitter to call out the people who so ardently countered the Black Lives Matter movement by saying "All Lives Matter" and question why they've suddenly fallen silent.

Many over social media also pointed out that #BlackLivesMatter activists have been following Hammond's case from the get-go and suggest they might be the only activists providing any input on the matter.

Tags

Shooting, Police shooting, South carolina, Race, Police, Police brutality, Activism