Kizzee was killed by police after a botched stop for a traffic violation committed on his bicycle.
The family of Dijon Kizzee, the California man who was killed by Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies in late August, revealed the findings of an independent autopsy in a press conference yesterday alongside their attorneys.
According to the autopsy, fifteen of the nineteen bullets fired by police struck Kizzee, the fatal shot hitting the man in the lung.
Kizzee’s death is unfortunately only the latest in a series of police-related killings of Black men in the wake of the tragic killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in May.
The autopsy found that Kizzee bled to death after the fatal shot to the lungs and was likely shot while still barely alive and moving.
“The deputies who fired their weapons, called for back-up, and spent several critical minutes waiting for back-up to arrive, while Dijon was bleeding to death in the street,” a statement from family attorney Carl Douglas read. “The independent autopsy supports my contention that this shooting was an execution, plain and simple.”
Another attorney for the family, Benjamin Crump, also shared video footage that contradicts the sheriff’s department’s version of events. He shared a video on Twitter that shows “LASD fatally shooting Dijon Kizzee in the back as he ran away from police.”
According to Douglas, unnamed witnesses asserted that Kizzee did not have a firearm in hand and that police made no attempt to deescalate the situation.
Police previously said that Kizzee was shot after first hitting an officer in the face and accidentally dropping a pistol to the ground.
Crump, who is also the attorney for the families of Breonna Taylor, Jacob Blake, George Floyd, and Ahmaud Arbery, lamented the rise in visible killings of Black people by police.
“It’s happening so fast we can barely keep up with the hashtags,” he said.
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