The mourners of Walter Scott, 50, black driver who had been fatally shot by a white police officer after fleeing from a traffic stop at North Charleston, are expected to gather on Saturday in Summerville, South Carolina, in the honor of his memory.
On Friday afternoon, many gathered to pay respect to Scott, whose open casket had been draped in an American flag embellished with a Dallas Cowboys sign and a miniature figure of a player. The left of his casket had a heart-shaped flower arrangement which read “Beloved Father” and a ribbon on the right reading “St. Andrews Parish High School Class of 1984.”
On April 4th Scott had been stopped for driving with a broken tail light in his 1991 Mercedes that he had bought from a neighbor and ironically was headed to an auto part store that very morning, according to his brother Rodney Scott.
Police and an attorney for former office Michael Slager said that Scott had been fatally shot in the course of a fight over Slager’s gun. Slager had been terminated and charged with murder when video recorded by a witness emerged which showed the officer firing 8 shots as Scott was on the run. The video feed from the police car’s dashboard camera showed that Slagger had asked for Scott for his license and registration, then headed back to his cruiser before Scott got out of his vehicle and started running.
This case has provoked outrage all across the nation as the most recent example of an unarmed black man being killed by a white officer.
Relatives of Scott said they believe that he has fled fearing being imprisoned due to unpaid child support payments, which is more than $ 18,000 including court fees, according to Charleston County records. Scott, a warehouse forklift operator had last paid his child support in 2012 with a bench warrant for his arrest being issued in early 2013. Since 2008, he had been jailed thrice.
Older brother Rodney Scott said, “He had trouble keeping up with the payments, that’s all, and he knew he would go to jail. His mission was to avoid the police as much as possible.”
According to Rodney Scott, his brother would take long detours to avoid the police patrols and also was very conscious about vehicle he had been driving had working headlights and taillights.