"It hurts": Latino community of 13-year-old killed by police in Chicago reels after shooting

Ivana Saric
·2 min read

Residents of Little Village, a well-known and predominantly Latino neighborhood in Chicago, are grieving the death of Adam Toledo, a 13-year-old Mexican American boy from the neighborhood who was shot and killed by a police officer on March 29, NBC News reports.

Why it matters: Adam Toledo's killing shines a spotlight on police shootings of Latinos, who are killed by law enforcement at the second-highest rate after Black Americans, according to data from the Washington Post.

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Residents have placed flowers and votive candles at in the street that Toledo was killed alongside a makeshift altar bearing his name. On Friday a local artist unveiled a mural of Toledo in the alleyway where he was shot.

Many residents have expressed how painful it was to see the police body camera footage of Toledo's shooting.

  • "It hurts, because he is a little kid," Toledo's aunt Theresa Chavarria told NBC news.

  • “He didn’t have nothing in his hands when the cop shot at him. As a matter of fact, he had his hands up and they still killed him,” local resident Jesus Hernández told the Chicago Tribune. “After watching it, I feel like I have to worry about my own safety because we don’t know how the cops are going to react,” he said.

While city authorities braced for protests after the release of the body camera footage Thursday, community gatherings have remained peaceful, per the Tribune.

  • A few dozen people gathered in protest outside local police headquarters to call for Mayor Lori Lightfoot's resignation, criticizing the mayor's call for calm.

  • Several peaceful marches took place in Chicago Thursday night, with residents calling for the police to be held accountable, per the Chicago Tribune.

Go deeper: Prosecutor on leave for failing to "fully present the facts" after shooting of 13-year-old boy

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Sign up for our weekly newsletter.] Treating police sources with necessary and appropriate skepticism could provide news audiences with a more complete picture of incidents such as police shootings and disrupt a process that has privileged some voices over others. And it isn’t a radical idea: Questioning and verifying information has always been a part of the journalist’s job.This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Danielle K. Kilgo, University of Minnesota. Read more:Smartphone witnessing becomes synonymous with Black patriotism after George Floyd’s deathWhy bodycam footage might not clear things up Danielle K. Kilgo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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