Officials revealed Wednesday that the Department of Justice will open an investigation into the police killing of unarmed Zachary Hammond, 19, to determine if his civil rights were violated.
When confronted by an officer over "what smelled like pot" in Seneca, S.C., Hammond, according to police testimony, drove towards the officer, forcing the officer to open fire out of fear for his life. However, an autopsy revealed that Hammond was shot from the side, rather than the front, thus challenging the validity of the initial report, as reported previously by HNGN.
The circumstances of Hammond's death bear striking similarities to fatal police shootings of unarmed black men in recent years but has not sparked the same level of national outrage - a fact that his family attributes to his race, according to The Washington Post. Hammond is white.
Coincidentally, as many have noted, many members of the Black Lives Matter movement tweeted about Hammond's death and the following investigation, but social media data revealed that Hammond's death was hardly mentioned by other users - many of whom tried to disrupt the movement by saying "All Lives Matter".
In light of this realization, Hammond's family asked the DOJ to investigate the death "with the same intensity and thoroughness as it has demonstrated in other interracial settings," according to a statement reported by CNN.
Eric Bland, the family's lawyer, said Sunday the unarmed teenager posed no public risk "other than a possible minor possession of marijuana" when he was shot in a restaurant parking lot, and called the shooting "ridiculous".
What precisely occurred between the officers' arrival and Hammond's death is unclear, and despite Hammond's parents asking for dashcam footage to be released, their lawyer said that they won't have legal standing to do so unless they file a wrongful death lawsuit, according to the Los Angeles Times.
"We just want answers. We have no clue as to what happened," his parents said at a press conference. "Our son deserves that, and we deserve that as a family."
