On February 26th Jamal Gaines was shot
and killed at a store he owned and ran called East Coast Kickz in
Rahway, New Jersey. It bugs me that I didn't hear about this. I
didn't know the kid or anything but even though I avoid the news
things like Black guys being shot and killed usually make it into my
news feeds online somehow. Sadly if its by the hands of police, not
each other.
A bit after the store was closed two
armed men posing as police officers entered holding guns. Tina
Wilson, Gaines' mother, described it as such. “The guy pushed his
arm and put the gun to his head, so my son threw a drink on the guy
with the gun and ran toward him, and the second guy shot him.” The
then ran through an alley and escaped. She also said that someone had
been threatening him and his sister. The store will remain open.
At the memorial service for her son
Wilson said “Today is a big celebration. No sadness or tears or
cries. I don't want his death to go in vain, with nothing coming out
of it. It happened for a reason. It's time to wake up and do better.”
Like I said above, I am bothered that I
didn't hear about this. Yeah, its all the way across the country but
this bugs me because he seemed like a good dude. 21 years old and
opened his own business while working at another to have enough to
invest and then own it after selling his own shoe collection, a car accident at 18, and blindness in one eye. That's fucking crazy and ambitious. To me a
shooting is a shooting and this should have gotten just as much if
not more attention and hashtags as when someone is killed or attacked
by police. You can't pick and choose.
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