Madison Shooting Angers Some Community Members
Following the Madison shooting of an unarmed teenager in his home by a veteran police officer, scores of city residents spent Saturday and Sunday protesting. Nineteen-year-old Tony Robinson was shot in his home on Friday night after police said they responded to complaints of Robinson causing a disturbance in the street, including jumping in front of cars.
Though young, Robinson had a criminal record and was being supervised by police after pleading guilty to being involved in an armed robbery last year, according to ABC. A recording of radio transmissions from the police show that the officer at the scene forced his way inside because he heard shooting.
The officer who shot him, 45-year-old Matt Kenny, has been with the Madison Police Department for 12 years and was involved in one other shooting. That shooting, which happened in 2007, had no repercussions for Kenny, who was found to be without fault in using his weapon.
Robinson died at the hospital, and Kenny was wounded but is now on administrative leave while the shooting is being investigated. Protesters gathered not long after the shooting, and crowds have grown since then, and continued through Sunday night.
On Sunday, a funeral for Robinson in Madison drew members of the community who complained about another shooting of an unarmed black man. Robinson was half-white and half-black, and the officer who shot him was white. Protests were peaceful and calm, but a couple dozen people did face off with police over the shooting in front of Robinson’s house.
They just ran into the street idk what their doin #Madison #MadisonShooting #TonyRobinson https://t.co/jSiCA2zYN6
— ?Shes So Trill? (@_NeaLanae) March 9, 2015
Some marchers carried signs with a now-familiar slogan, “Black Lives Matter,” according to ABC News. A Sunday night vigil over the Madison shooting that lasted late into the night included singing and protesting. In downtown Madison, dozens of demonstrators blocked traffic on Saturday and marched through the streets to protest the shooting, according to a report from local media outlet WEAU. The incident comes on the heels of a damaging Department of Justice report that found widespread and endemic racism in the Ferguson police department, where black 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed last summer by a white police officer.
Candle light vigil #Madison #MadisonShooting #TonyRobinson pic.twitter.com/ZoBPTHlpiD
— ?Shes So Trill? (@_NeaLanae) March 9, 2015
Community residents told ABC that they were concerned about just walking down the street, given what had happened to their neighbor and a Madison resident.
“Us being teenagers and you know African American teenagers, you know it can happen to us,” said Darian Grant, a classmate of Robinson’s. He was outside the young man’s former Madison home where he had been shot.
A makeshift memorial has been set up there by area residents to mourn the Madison shooting.
[Photo via Tony Robinson’s mother, Andrea Irwin.]
