Cop Kills Unarmed White Teen

An unarmed white teenager was killed by the police at a fast food restaurant drive thru in South Carolina.

The New York Times reports that teenaged Zachary Hammond was gunned down by Seneca, South Carolina police in what seems to have been a drug bust gone wrong at a local Hardee's drive thru.

As in most cases where the police kill an unarmed person, the police are saying the officer felt, "threatened" when he opened fire, hitting Hammond twice and killing him as he sat in his car. An independent autopsy by Hammond's family contradicts this because of the nature of his wounds, and critical details seem to have been left out of the official autopsy.

The officer, who the police department refuses to name, seemingly in violation of the state's Freedom of Information Act, says that Hammond drove his car toward him. But Hammond was in the drive thru at the time, and the officer cornered Hammond with his own car for no obvious reason. The independent autopsy said that Hammond, who was sitting in the driver's seat, was shot in the back left shoulder, which would seemingly make it impossible for him to have also been driving the car toward the officer when he was shot.

While the facts are still uncertain, a dashcam video is said to exist, and the county coroner has labeled Hammond's death as a homicide.

The family for the boy's family has demanded the media pay more attention to the issue, particularly as the killing of black men and women at the hands of the police has dominated the political discourse in the United States since the killing of Michael Brown in 2014.  

It is unclear why this case has not garnered as much attention as these other cases, but the lack of available video may be one factor.