Kaepernick on Alton Sterling shooting: ‘What lynchings look like in 2016’
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San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick compared Tuesday’s shooting of Alton Sterling by police officers in Baton Rouge, La., to a modern-day lynching in an Instagram video he posted on Wednesday.
The video appears to be recorded by a witness and has garnered public outrage since it started circulating on social media. The footage shows two police officers pinning down Sterling, a 37-year-old black man, before fatally shooting him. Multiple gunshots can be heard during the video.
The autopsy determined Sterling’s cause of death was multiple gunshot wounds to the chest and back, according to CNN.
“This is what lynchings look like in 2016!” Kaepernick wrote. “Another murder in the streets because the color of a man’s skin, at the hands of the people who they say will protect us. When will they be held accountable? or did he fear for his life as he executed this man?”
Warning: The video below contains graphic content.
The Department of Justice has opened a civil rights investigation into the shooting, which has sparked protests in Baton Rouge.
According to the Baton Rouge Police Department, the officers were responding to a 911 call saying that a man was selling CDs in the store parking lot and had threatened the caller with a gun.
The two officers involved have been placed on administrative leave.
