A father whose son was shot and killed by an illegal immigrant said the Black Lives Matter movement sidelined his son’s death because it wasn’t caused by the police.
Jamiel Shaw’s son, Jamiel Shaw Jr., was killed in 2008 when an illegal immigrant, Pedro Espinoza, shot him after mistaking the 17-year-old for a member of a rival gang. Espinoza was subsequently convicted and sentenced to death by a jury.
“It seems like Black Lives Matter only focuses on black people who are murdered by the police,” the elder Shaw said on Fox & Friends Sunday morning.
“You know, my son was murdered in 2008, and I reached out to anybody that would listen, especially black people, because I thought for sure I would have a lot of support in the black community,” he said.
The father added in the interview that the deaths of black people should not be “some kind of death lottery, like, ‘Yeah, I won. I was murdered by the police, so we get something out of it.’ Everybody else just gets screwed and has to sit on the sidelines and pretend like, you know, they’re getting over it.”
Black Lives Matter wasn’t founded until five years after Shaw Jr.’s death, in 2013, following George Zimmerman’s acquittal on murder charges in the killing of Trayvon Martin. The movement has gained renewed prominence and an influx of funding in recent weeks following the death of a black man, George Floyd, while he was in police custody. Protesters have sought to raise awareness about systemic racism and police brutality against non-white people. Some of these demonstrations have spun out into riots.
Shaw claimed the movement operated under the notion, “If you’re killed by the police, it’s OK. I mean, we can tear down and burn down buildings, but if you’re murdered by an illegal alien, you have to be quiet.”
“It’s not fair when I watch on TV. The only reason why they care is that they’re killed by the police, and then they get to tear down the city, burn up everything, loot everything, and nobody goes to jail,” Shaw said. “I’m like, ‘Man, this is unfair, you know? I’m black, where’s our help?'”
