Deadly Secrets: How California Law Shields Oakland Police Violence
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Gary King, Jr., a 20-year-old vacuum salesman and contractor, lived around the corner with his parents and siblings. That afternoon, King and a few of his friends went to East Bay Liquors to buy snacks. As they exited the store, Gonzales drove by in his patrol car.
Gonzales was on the lookout for a suspect in a month-old murder that had taken place several blocks away. Witnesses say he swerved across six lanes of traffic into the liquor store parking lot, where he got out of his car and approached King. The two exchanged words. Gonzales then slapped soda and chips out of King’s hands and grabbed hold of him. King resisted, and witnesses say Gonzales pulled the young man into a headlock by his shoulder-length dreadlocks and punched him repeatedly. Gonzales then Tasered King multiple times, according to a civil suit filed by King’s family.
King broke free of Gonzales and staggered west across MLK Way, holding his sagging pants up and yelling for help. Witnesses say Gonzales then drew his pistol and fired twice. King fell to the sidewalk with two fatal bullet wounds in his back. Gonzales ran over to King’s body and planted his foot on top of it while aiming his pistol at King’s friends, warning them to back up. He then cuffed King’s hands behind his back.
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Gary King, Sr. looking at Father’s Day notes his son wrote him. (Photo by Jorge Rivas)
King’s parents, Gary Sr. and Cathy, ran out to the street, where additional OPD officers had been summoned to hold back an increasingly angry crowd. Cathy King tried to get through to her son’s inert body but was stopped by a police officer. She and her husband were not allowed to see their son, who by now was hidden by a clutch of OPD officers and EMTs. The Kings followed the ambulance to Highland Hospital, where doctors told them Gary had died but refused to let them see his corpse.
For Cathy King, being barred from her son’s deathbed was the final insult. “No one should stand in the way of a mother in the final moments of her son’s life,” she said at a February conference on police violence in Oakland.