This May 25, 2020, file image from a police body camera shows bystanders including Darnella Frazier, third from right filming, as former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was recorded pressing his knee on George Floyd's neck for several minutes in Minneapolis. (Minneapolis Police Department via AP, File)
Want the best of VICE News straight to your inbox? Sign up here.The uncle of the teenager who filmed George Floyd’s murder last May was killed by Minneapolis police when his car was struck as they chased a robbery suspect.Shortly after midnight on Tuesday, an MPD officer pursuing a carjacking suspect struck two cars unrelated to the robbery, police told Fox 9. The driver of one of those cars, 40-year-old Leneal Lamont Frazier, was killed, Fox 9 reported.The robbery suspect got away, while the officer was hospitalized with serious but non-life threatening injuries, according to Fox 9. Darnella Frazier, who was 17 when she filmed Floyd’s death, confirmed in a Facebook post that the man who died was her uncle. “MINNEAPOLIS police Killed my uncle,” she wrote. “Another black man lost his life in the hands of the police!”“Minneapolis police has cost my whole family a big loss,” Frazier added.Leneal Frazier’s daughter, Lanesha Frazier, told Fox 9 that her father’s death was “not fair, not right.”“I’m really grieving because all these police out here, they’re not watching what they’re doing,” she said. “They need to watch what they’re doing, innocent people out here being hurt."
Frazier’s family has started a GoFundMe to help with funeral expenses and care for his surviving children. As of Wednesday morning, the family had raised more than $8,000. His sister, Cheryl, told CBS 4 that her brother “was a very good person, he would help you if you needed help, he’ll give you the shirt off his back if he had to.”Darnella Frazier’s cell phone recording of the murder of George Floyd sparked a national reckoning with police brutality and race, and she won a Pulitzer Prize special citation in June for “courageously recording the murder of George Floyd, a video that spurred protests against police brutality around the world, highlighting the crucial role of citizens in journalist’s quest for truth and justice.”
Derek Chauvin, the MPD cop convicted in Floyd’s murder, was sentenced last month to more than 22 years in prison.
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Frazier’s family has started a GoFundMe to help with funeral expenses and care for his surviving children. As of Wednesday morning, the family had raised more than $8,000. His sister, Cheryl, told CBS 4 that her brother “was a very good person, he would help you if you needed help, he’ll give you the shirt off his back if he had to.”Darnella Frazier’s cell phone recording of the murder of George Floyd sparked a national reckoning with police brutality and race, and she won a Pulitzer Prize special citation in June for “courageously recording the murder of George Floyd, a video that spurred protests against police brutality around the world, highlighting the crucial role of citizens in journalist’s quest for truth and justice.”
Derek Chauvin, the MPD cop convicted in Floyd’s murder, was sentenced last month to more than 22 years in prison.