Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported the killing of a Mexican shot by a policeman in Florida.
In the early hours of Thursday, an altercation was recorded in the town of Immokalee, in which a Mexican citizen died following the police performance of officers in Collier County, Florida.
Nicholas Morales-Bessannia, 37, was a resident of Immokalee, an agricultural town where many Mexican and Central American day laborers live. He died Thursday of a gunshot fired by a policeman from Collier County, southwest Florida.
En referencia al caso del connacional fallecido en Immokalee, Florida, @ConsulMexMia informa lo siguiente: https://t.co/12WXf3Fj6K @arocha221 @dmillan pic.twitter.com/TVL6mwrx17
— ConsulMex Miami (@ConsulMexMia) September 18, 2020
The Mexican Consulate General in Miami requested detailed information from the authorities on what happened so that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs could initiate appropriate diplomatic and legal action in defense of the deceased.
Collier’s Sheriff’s Office opened a criminal and administrative investigation into the incident. According to police rules, the firing officer is on administrative leave until the outcome of the investigation is known.
Police officers indicated that in the early hours of Thursday, while responding to a call for a riot, they found a citizen armed with a shovel, ordered him to lay down and did not.
The sheriff’s office stated in his statement that the subject advanced to the agents. One of them feared for his safety and that of those around him and fired.
Police officers gave the victim first aid and then transferred him to a hospital in the area.
The Consulate General of Mexico in Miami contacted the relatives of the deceased who may receive legal and consular assistance, as well as the option of repatriation of Nicholas Morales-Bessannia’s remains to Mexican territory.
African-Americans and Mexicans was shot by American Policeman
Starting this month, an American policeman shot dead black boy Deon Kay. Officers say he was carrying a gun at the time of his arrest. Kay was 18 and residing in the Congress Heights neighborhood of southeastern Washington, D.C.
In August, social media images of the death of Ramón Timothy Lopez, 28, who died after being immobilized by Phoenix police officers, were shared. The fact occurred after an officer responded to a call to stop Lopez because Lopez was “looking at the vehicles and making obscene gestures” at a mall.
Three days after this case was known, another incident came to light, Jacob Blake, 29, was shot seven times in the back and needed to be moved urgently to a hospital because of his severe state of health in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
The case of policeman violence that has had the greatest media and sociopolitical impact in the United States was the murder of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African-American man, who died on May 25 in Minneapolis in police custody.
