Six policemen are under scrutiny for shooting California rapper Willie Bo while he was asleep in his car. The 21-year-old aspiring rapper had his car parked outside Taco Bell at Vallejo area in California. The shooting took place on February 6 after employees at the fast-food outlet late that evening called to report a Mercedes parked in the drive-thru line with a man slumped over in the driver's seat.
The police in a statement said that officers responded to the call and as they approached the locked vehicle, they noticed that the driver was unresponsive and had a gun on his lap. They added that the car's transmission was in drive. The officers seem to have used their weapons in fear for their own safety.
As the officers assessed the situation and tried to prevent the vehicle from moving forward, the statement said, things turned deadly. "The driver ... suddenly began to move," the police report said. "The officers told the driver to keep his hands visible, however the driver quickly reached for the handgun on his lap. It was unclear how many bullets were fired. McCoy was pronounced dead at the scene.
Family of Willie Bo, whose real name is Marc McCoy, challenged the police version of events and described the shooting as an "execution" and a clear case of racial profiling.
"There was no attempt to try to work out a peaceful solution," Marc McCoy, Willie's older brother, said.
McCoy's shooting follows a string of similar incidents of alleged police brutality in the US in recent years. This is not the first time the Vallejo Police Department has come under scrutiny following complaints of excessive force.
A video in 2018 showed a Vallejo police officer repeatedly hitting a man with his flashlight as he was being restrained and handcuffed by another officer. In another incident in 2017, an was officer straddling a man on the ground and punching him in the face several times. A video of the incident caused great uproar on social media.
