Killing of Oscar Grant
2009 shooting in Oakland, California
Oscar Grant was a 22-year-old Black man who was killed in the early morning hours of New Year's Day 2009 by BART Police Officer Johannes Mehserle in Oakland, California. Responding to reports of a fight on a crowded Bay Area Rapid Transit train returning from San Francisco, BART Police officers detained Grant and several other passengers on the platform at the Fruitvale BART Station. BART officer Anthony Pirone kneed Grant in the head and forced Grant to lie face down on the platform. Officer Johannes Mehserle drew his pistol and shot Grant. Grant was rushed to Highland Hospital in Oakland and pronounced dead later that day. The events were captured on bystanders' mobile phones. Owners would then upload the footage to YouTube. Both protests and riots took place in the following days.
On January 30, 2010, Alameda County prosecutors charged Mehserle with second-degree murder in their indictment for the shooting. Mehserle resigned from his position and pleaded not guilty.
“Killing of Oscar Grant” enters the record as 2009 shooting in Oakland, California. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Killing, Oscar and Grant can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Killing of Oscar Grant” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Killing, Oscar and Grant provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4834644. Authority coordinates are 37.775, -122.222. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2009 and 2010.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Killing of Oscar Grant”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Killing of Oscar Grant primary sources, Killing of Oscar Grant archive and Killing research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Killing of Oscar Grant”?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Killing of Oscar Grant” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.