Killing of Alton Sterling
2016 police killing of a black man in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, United States
On July 5, 2016, Alton Sterling, a 37-year-old black man, was shot and killed by two Baton Rouge Police Department officers, Blane Salamoni and Howie Lake II, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, United States. Police were responding to a report that Sterling was selling CDs and that he had used a gun to threaten a man outside a convenience store. They attempted to arrest Sterling which led to a physical struggle on the ground. As the officers were attempting to control Sterling's arms, they shot and killed him. The officers stated that he was reaching for the loaded handgun in his pants pocket. Seconds after the confrontation had started, Salamoni threatened to shoot Sterling, yelling that he would "shoot [Sterling] in the fucking head" if he moved. The owner of the store where the shooting occurred said that Sterling was "not the one causing trouble" during the earlier situation that led to the police being called. The shooting was recorded by multiple bystanders.
The shooting led to protests in Baton Rouge and a request for a civil rights investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice. In May 2017, federal prosecutors decided not to file criminal charges against the police officers involved.
The public source identifies “Killing of Alton Sterling” as 2016 police killing of a black man in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, United States. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Killing, Alton and Sterling.
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This entry incorporates text from “Killing of Alton Sterling” 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.