Vol. 71/No. 18      May 7, 2007

Jessica McGowan/Special

Horse-drawn hearse carries body of Ron Pettaway in funeral procession and protest march April 21 in College Park, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta. Pettaway, 26, an African American, was killed by cops April 15 at the Frozen Palace nightclub, seen in background to right.

His remains were carried from the parking lot of the Frozen Palace nightclub, where he had been killed by Fulton County police the previous Sunday morning, and where his brother Roy was also shot but survived, to the Liveoak Baptist Church, where the funeral was held.

Hundreds of others were already at the church, swelling the crowd to 500.

Billed as a “unity march,” the gathering was organized to show support for Pettaway’s family and to protest the killing, one of a rash of deaths from cop shootings here. Pettaway was the 14th victim of the police in metropolitan Atlanta in the last 15 months.

“He was unarmed,” said Johnny Jones, 19, a friend of the deceased. “This was murder. I have seen this an enormous amount of times.”

Dirk White, 50, a used car salesman in Marietta, did not know Ron Pettaway or his family but said he came because he has seen enough. “I’m tired of looking in the paper every month and seeing that another Black man has been killed, that all the witnesses say he was unarmed, and that nothing ever comes of it,” he told the Militant. “The police department does the investigation, and the conclusion is always that the officers were justified in their actions. It’s every month, and not just in Atlanta. It’s New York or wherever. All Black men aren’t violent. We don’t deserve it. It could have been me. I’ve been seeing this my whole life.”

“His father has been back and forth to Iraq,” said Angela Marion who came from Conyers and had been a neighbor of the Pettaways for three years. “He moved from Jacksonville, Florida, to make a better life for his kids and this is what happened.”

Roy Pettaway Jr., Ron Pettaway’s father and a sergeant in the U.S. Army, told those at the service, “We need to solve this problem. We know what the problem is. The world knows what the problem is. But, every time we turn the other cheek, there’s not another cheek to turn. We don’t hate anyone. We just want justice.”

According to the Fulton County medical examiner, Ron Pettaway, 26, who was a self-employed carpet cleaner, was fatally shot in the back of the head by two officers who had been called to the club to break up a fight. His brother, Roy Pettaway III, 27, was also shot and wounded when he went to check on Ron. Neither of the two brothers was armed.

LaShonda Daniels, an eyewitness, said Ron Pettaway had walked calmly out of the club with the cops. “He was no criminal, no gun, nothing like that,” she told the Militant. “Neither one of them. They judged him as a thug because he had a gold tooth and was having a good time.”

DeKalb County cops killed 12 people last year. These shootings are under investigation. Atlanta cops also killed 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston in a drug raid on her house in November. In the latter case, a Fulton County grand jury was convened April 25 to consider murder charges against three narcotics officers.

Many of those who turned out for Pettaway’s funeral said they came to protest all these killings.

Sheila Spivey came from Chamblee with her son. She did not know the Pettaways. “This is 2007 and it’s still happening,” she said. “I have a 14-year-old son. We have to show that we stand for righteousness. They [police] have no compassion, no value for human life.”

At the service, Rev. Markel Hutchins, a spokesman for the affected families, said, “The family of Ron Pettaway has made a determination that they are the last family to go through this. We are going to call for a major march in the city of Atlanta. We are going to shut this town down to make them stop killing our young men.”

Rachele Fruit, Maceo Dixon, and Wesley Lewis contributed to this article.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home