Illinois Police Officer Shoots and Kills Unarmed Black Teen, Injures His Girlfriend
by Cedric 'BIG CED' Thornton

October 23, 2020

Illinois Police Officer Shoots and Kills Unarmed Black Teen, Injures His Girlfriend

Another police shooting has taken the life of a Black teenager in Illinois, according to USA Today.

Before midnight Tuesday, a Waukegan police officer shot into a vehicle that had allegedly reversed at him. The passenger, 19-year-old Marcellis Stinnette, succumbed to his injuries, according to an autopsy report released Thursday. Tafara Williams, who was driving the car, is now in the hospital with serious injuries.

A police officer had approached a “suspicious” vehicle, Waukegan Police Commander Edgar Navarro said. During the investigation, the vehicle took off and was spotted moments later by another officer, who then got out of his car to approach the vehicle.

“That officer exited his vehicle, and the vehicle that he was investigating began to reverse toward the officer. The officer then pulled out his duty weapon and fired into the vehicle,” Navarro said.

The incident happened in a city that is about 15 miles south of Kenosha, Wisconsin, where 29-year-old Jacob Blake was shot in the back several times by a white police officer as he was getting back into his car.

Waukegan Mayor Sam Cunningham has a personal connection to the case.

“This is tough on this community. I know this family personally. Their great-grandmother used to babysit me. To speak to them about this, yeah it hurts,” Cunningham said at a press conference. “I’m a Black man who grew up in that same neighborhood. It could have been me.”

“This is just something that I see on the news or on TV and think it’ll never happen to me. Now I’m a victim of the same thing. My mother has lost her son. Another African American family is broken,” Stinnette’s sister Zhanellis Banks told News4Jax. Stinnette grew up in Jacksonville, Florida, before moving to Illinois a few years ago.

“He didn’t deserve to go out like this. He didn’t deserve that at all,” Stinnette’s sister Tanellis Holmes said.


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